Based on the black-and-white player images over plain color backgrounds, I assume Goudey printed its 33-card 1941 baseball set using a form of screen printing, with ink and paper quality limited by the expense of war-era materials. Once printed, the sheets appear to be hand cut (often misaligned or angled) by different staff than those involved in layout. Some cards were cut (wrongly) with names at the top, some with no names at all, and others (rightly) with names at the bottom.
I'm a novice in lithography and 1940s industrial techniques. Does anyone here know what printing approach their 1941 baseball set used?
Baseball:
http://www.oldcardboard.com/r/r324/r324gal.asp
Its overall quality pales in comparison to Goudey's contemporaneous Sky Birds set, so could've been farmed out to different designers and printers, with baseball getting the worse option.
Sky Birds:
http://www.skytamer.com/R137.html