Printing press plates for cards

[Leon]

At some price point it seems almost everything is collectible. I confess I have bought a cut out before!! (as for the printing plates, I am not sure)

Originally Posted by Tripredacus

Regarding this particular auction, this is one of perhaps 2 sellers that have been selling various front and back plates of 90s and early 2000s sets for years now. I say perhaps 2 because there is one ebay seller I used to buy Pacific hockey plates from a long time ago, but their account no longer exists, then they have a new ebay account now. I had posted about this on HobbyInsider with specifics, I will find that later and put it here. I do not recall if this cardmax1 is the new account or is a different seller.

The range of plates sold are always out of print or defunct manufacturers, or specifically from sets that are not popular. Things like Pacific hockey and football, Pro Line, Pro Set 1994 football, Conlon baseball (just the Babe Ruth set) and the like. Sometimes non-sports or other sports I am not familiar with.

The plates themselves are always normal, not reverse image. They have the rounded corners like you would see in plates released in retail Topps or Upper Deck products. They do not have anything on the back. And strangely, they are nearly all the "black" plate and not in the 4 colors that Topps, UD or Panini plates are released as.

So for myself, I am never quite certain how legit these are, other than I have not seen any duplicates appear. I do know that the Pacific plates for hockey only appeared after the Pacific bankruptcy auction, at the same time the back-stock of non-serial numbered Pacific cards came to Ebay. While those un-numbered cards disappeared quite fast, these random plates have been sold steadily for over 10 years now.

But it became interesting that in recent years it hasn't just been Pacific plates. The one or two sellers I know that sold these plates always had Pacific ones up until just recently, say 4 years ago when random football ones started being sold instead, and then 1-2 years ago the Conlon Babe Ruth plates appeared.

Nothing ever going for a large amount of money, but for myself it is the only reason I have the dozen or so I do have. They are cheap enough that at $1-5 if they aren't real it isn't a big loss. I think my average price paid for the ones I have is $3.