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Old 03-13-2018, 05:20 PM
ls7plus ls7plus is offline
Larry
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Location: Southfield, Michigan
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Quote:
Originally Posted by steve B View Post
It was probably cost.

Some of the old sets were actually done from photos, like the halftone portions of T206 or many of the caramel cards. But the color portion was what was done by artists.

Even on the most basic level, you'd need a plate for each color, six or more. Plus the back. And you'd have to pay the artists who did the backgrounds. That's already at least 6 times the cost.

The issuer would have had a lot of the say in it, and there's a pretty big difference between what a near monopoly is willing to pay to finish off any small competitors, and what a smaller company is willing to pay for something to give away for nothing to help stimulate sales.

There are a lot of similar modern situations, Topps going to large format cards in 52, which had to have been more expensive to produce than the smaller Bowmans.
And I think, even closer is the number of issues from MSA in the 70's. Mostly stock discs with black and white pictures that didn't include logos. Sometimes I think that many of the 20's sets were produced by a similar company. MSA didn't make stuff to compete with Topps, but made stuff that could be sold to a number of companies as giveaways.
+1, but the Exhibits of the '20's on completely trounce the earlier issues in presenting accurate, detailed visual images, except for a few black and white postcards of the 19-oughts and teens, as well as some of the cards shown above. To me, the card should be a two-dimensional slice of a three-dimensional moment in the player's life and career, created nearly contemporaneously with the time, not some drawing or crudely colored photo which might or might not very vaguely resemble the person in question. Which is the main reason I have no interest in T206's, Cracker Jacks, candy and caramel cards.

Just my personal taste,

Larry

Last edited by ls7plus; 03-13-2018 at 05:24 PM.
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