REA reveals a 24 year mystery....the PIEDMONT Plank

[Brian Weisner]

Hi Ted,
I'm sure we could start another thread on the "definition of a proof" and get at least a hundred different opinions...

Be well Brian

PS I want to be the one to find the 3rd Piedmont Wagner...

[ethicsprof]

Rather than getting into discussions in the realm of epistemological verifiability, i'm thinking it might be more prudent to create the thread on
definitions of 'scraps' instead, BW.

best,

barry

[Brian Weisner]

Hi Barry,
Leave that lingo in the classroom.... We are talking about cards....

Hope you are well, Brian


PS Now Barry sloate can come on and correct my use of commas.....,,,,,,

[ethicsprof]

backatcha buddy.

best,


barry

[tedzan]

I understand Greek......but...."epistemological verifiability" is beyond my comprehension.

Professor, please elucidate ?


T-Rex TED

[tedzan]

You asked......"Wow that Johnson proof is awesome.Do you own that card"

It's mine, but the front and back are reprints of the real one.

The full color Johnson pictured with it is a real T206.


TED Z

[bond73]

"The Johnson was part of a group of about 30 cards which didn't make it all the way through the printing process. Most of these "printer's scraps" only received the first 2-3 colors of the process, thus they appear as black and yellow with a touch of brown."

There are only about 30 of these yellow and brown printer's scrap exist?? They are rarer than Wagner then

[jlynch1960]

I've had trouble with the story about the the Gretzky Wagner being cut from a sheet since I read the supposed details in the book "The Card" some time ago. Mastro supposedly required that a Plank be thrown in as well as some other important cards when he bought the Gretzky Wagner, but what doesn't make sense is where are the other high quality Wagers and Planks with Piedmont backs that would have been cut from the same sheet?

All of the accounts say the card was cut from a sheet, not a strip. On a sheet, every card above and below the best Plank and Wagner would also be a Plank and a Wagner. We know that this is how the sheets were printed since you see miscut cards that show the same player's name at the top of the miscut card, instead of some other player's name. Accordingly, depending on the length of a sheet, there would be many other high quality Piedmont Wagners and Planks (also with hand cut borders), none of which have surfaced in 25 years. No one in there right mind would say "let's take just two and throw the rest away."

Also, the Wagner proof strip that was supposedly found in the pocket of his uniform has, of course, the Wagner card and four different players, none of whom is Plank. Is there another proof strip out there with both Wagner and Plank?

Perhaps it requires some lost knowledge of the printing process employed in 1909, but from a manufacturing standpoint, the existence of the sheet from which these cards were supposedly cut, just doesn't make sense.

I posted on this same subject a couple of months back, but people seemed more interested in talking about how I misspelled Gretzky's name and hockey cards instead.

[Leon]

The only other Piedmont Wagner I know of is owned by my good friend John Esch....who lurks on our board. It is the Bray one I believe....that had the letter accompanying it. It was sold in a Mastro Auction some 4-5 yrs ago. I didn't read all of the above posts so that one might have been mentioned already. It is in an SGC AUT holder as I think it's handcut. Don't hold me to that but I think that is what I remember...

[benjulmag]

Originally Posted by jlynch1960

Perhaps it requires some lost knowledge of the printing process employed in 1909, but from a manufacturing standpoint, the existence of the sheet from which these cards were supposedly cut, just doesn't make sense.

What then is your view of what these cards are? Do you think they are regular issue cards that were inserted in cigarette packs, are factory (hand) cut proofs, repros, ...?

[T206Collector]

If Plank and Wagner were removed after a short run, and other cards were added to the remainder of that run, one would expect that the ones that were added would be somewhat shortprinted. Since no other T206 cards appear to be as short printed as the Plank and Wagner, it appears plausible that the short printed 150s could have been late additions to the sheet space once occupied Plank and Wagner. What is perhaps more plausible is that two other unknown 150s took those spots and are only somewhat shortprinted -- to the point that 100 years later we don't even notice the relatively short supply.

[ethicsprof]

Sorry i'm late in responding to your question, Ted.
i'm a little slow remembering which threads to go back to and all the way
through---still learning the new ropes.

Epistemological verifiability was a way to play with my UNC-Chapel Hill
bud, Brian W. ---a little academic bantering between a Davidson Wildcat and
a CH--Tarheel. When he refers to the word 'proof', it causes those of trained in philosophy during the archaic period to hustle to the field of epistemology
(how do we KNOW something---how do we PROVE it---how do we VERIFY
the reliability of our criteria composing our proof). I could go on but i know better.
but thanks for asking, old friend. and thanks for the word 'elucidate'---one of my absolute favorites.

best,
barry

[tedzan]

Thanks for the "elucidation"........how's about that, for a variant on one of your favorites ?

Back to vintage cards....did you check-out my latest suggestion to you on the "Revisting Quintuplicate" thread ?



TED Z

[mkdltn]

A Real proof would have register marks. and no back image. The proofs were pulled from the smaller original stone on which the art was executed. These were the printers guide. Transfers were taken from the smaller stones and transferred to the larger stones in multiple. During this process the crop marks were removed.

The term proof could also possibly apply to the first few sheets from the initial production run that were used for promotional purposes such as salesman's samples and copyright files. Those may not have a back image.

Some of the cards you have with missing colors may be progressive proof images. When a proof book was made an impression of each color was pulled and then an image was pulled of the combination of those colors.

American lithographic company proof books are quite plentiful for all of their other work. I own several from them and other litho houses. I imagine that the proof books suffered the same fate that many cigar label proof books in the 70s and 80s suffered by being disassembled and the pages sold separately. In the case of T206 cards they may have been cut into individual cards.

I am working on a site to illustrate the process in detail but it is slow going as I can only get to it on occasion. I will get it out and start a new thread when I finally launch the darn thing.

[ethicsprof]

thanks for the direction to the Quints; i'm still fumbling around a bit.
i'm still a Monster Man but have been spending time and money acquiring the 206 era packs for display and some type collecting, also for display.
Do know that the A B C D Moeller is on my list down the road, particularly since i love the Drum and would love to display the 4.

thanks for the elucidate variant----i love variants and 206 variations!!
now back to Plank,etc.

best,
Barry

[tedzan]

Thanks for posting....I've always been fascinated with lithography and how it is done.
Any more info on this process is greatly appreciated.

Also, do you have any idea how the T206 printed sheets were formatted ?


TED Z

[jmk59]

Originally Posted by jlynch1960

...but what doesn't make sense is where are the other high quality Wagers and Planks with Piedmont backs that would have been cut from the same sheet?

... Accordingly, depending on the length of a sheet, there would be many other high quality Piedmont Wagners and Planks (also with hand cut borders), none of which have surfaced in 25 years. No one in there right mind would say "let's take just two and throw the rest away."

Wow. I think this is a great great question and am not sure why it is not generating some speculation. I've never even thought about it.

Suppose the sheet was 5x5. Where are the other 4 Wagners and the other 4 Planks? Is it possible someone is sitting on them all these years? Is it possible they did get thrown away, not only to protect the 1/1 scarcity of the high condition of the Wagner/Plank but also maybe to conceal the fact that these were cut from a sheet? Or is it more likely that the early sheets did not include any individual player more than once?

I'm thinking the last is more likely - that each player only appeared once - even though miscuts suggest otherwise. Maybe they changed the process at some point. Would have been nice if the original sheet had been left intact for at least educational purposes.

J

[tedzan]

My theory is that the T206 were initially printed in 12 card formats. Or as few as 6 cards/sheet.
If you look at the composition of each series' (150, 350, 460, and the So. Lgrs.), there is com-
mon denominator of six

In any event, I think you answered your own question with this....
"Or is it more likely that the early sheets did not include any individual player more than once?"


I agree....multiples of Wagner, Plank (or any other Subject) on a sheet just did not happen on
the 1st printing.

And, as for anyone hoarding multiples of Plank or Wagner......that defies everything we know
about normal human behavior. I would believe that, only if these colorful little pieces of card-
board were still worth pennies( or a dollar or two).


TED Z

[Brian Weisner]

Hi Ted and Joann,
I'm sorry to disagree, but all of the miscut cards from all series, including the 1st indicate otherwise.... Almost every miscut with a name at the top or bottom is of the same player, so it's obvious that multiples were printed on each sheet. It's also apparent from the numerous scrap cards that the players were different horizontally....

Be well Brian


PS I don't know about hoarding, but I do know that one quiet collector had 3 Wagner's at one time....

[jmk59]

Brian,

Is there any chance that the layout of a player repeating vertically on a sheet came in later production runs? If the entire sheet was one big plate, I can't imagine it would change. But if each player was an individual plate, and then the individual plates were assembled to make the sheet - kind of like a printing press - then I could see one or two rearrangements, especially after a few early runs.

Ted's explanation seems like the only one possible for jlynch's question. I agree with Ted that it seems highly unlikely that there were originally more than one Piedmont Wagner or Plank and that the dups were somehow hoarded or destroyed. Much more likely that only one of each ever existed on the found sheet.

And if there was a sheet, and there was only one Wagner and one Plank on that sheet, then they were not repeated vertically despite the top/bottom name patterns of known miscuts.

There are only two possibilities: multiple Wagners and Planks on the sheet in question, or not. I'm thinking not, but I don't know.

And I still think it is a really great question, because having no multiples flies in the face of conventional wisdom on the vertical repeats. Having multiples creates a mystery that is awesome to consider.

J

[tedzan]

Unfortunately, the only evidence we have of how these T206's were printed is the 5-card strip with Wagner.
And, I think we can consider it a "proof" printing. The front has proof marks and its back is blank. This strip
includes the portraits of M. Brown, Kling, Wagner, Bowerman, and CYoung. We do not know how many other
Subjects were on this strip (or sheet). However, we have heard that Plank was on it.
For whatever it is worth, I looked at the T206 surveys that I have (totaling approx. 40,000 cards). Specific-
ally, the ratio of the PIEDMONT 150 cards of these 5 subjects to their total sample. These 4 cards are found
with PIEDMONT 150 backs only 20-25% of their total sample....Wagner is 4%.

Guess what the % of PIEDMONT 150 backs are true for all the other 150 Series cards ?


The data shows that PIEDMONT 150 cards are......

100% for Jennings (portrait), Lundgren (Cubs) and Magie

and, vary from 33% to 66% for all other 147 Subjects

4% for Plank

The point I'm attempting to make here is that in the process of discarding Wagner's....American Lithographic
disposed of a number of other cards along with Wagner that were printed on the same sheet.


TED Z

[Brian Weisner]

Hi Ted,
Your last post makes more more sense to me.....As I think most of the existing Piedmont Wagner's and Planks went home with ALC workers...
Be well Brian

[tedzan]

You are probably correct, as Plank and Wagner were very popular with the folks when the 1st series of T206's were available.

But, I also think that the "Candy vs Tobacco wars" of 1909 (American Caramel Co. vs American Tobacco Co.) had something
to do with the discontinuance of the T206 Plank and Wagner cards.

Also, add Ramly into this mix....I'm sure you have noticed how very few Boston Red Sox are represented in the entire T206 set.


Be good, ole Buddy,

TED Z

[tedzan]

TedZ

[tedzan]

In a prior post you said........
"Hi Ted,
Perhaps we are splitting hairs, but I don't consider any cards with ad's on the back as proofs."


I've reconsidered and fully agree with you....the example I gave with this Johnson as a "proof" card is incorrect.





This card, and other T206's like this one, are simply cards that did not go thru the full 6-color printing process.
The back of this card has the Sweet Caporal 460 Factory 30 (NY) advertisement. We know that none of the 55
Subjects in the 350/460 Series are found with this Sweet Cap back. American Litho. printed the 55 Subjects in
this series with this back, but did not issue them.
Instead, in 1911, American Tobacco Co. transferred their Sweet Caporal production to Durham, NC (Factory 42).
These cards were OVERPRINTED with a scroll covering the Factory 30 line and added the "Factory 42, N.C." line.

Furthermore, what I find just as interesting about this card is, that it proves that the backs of the T206's were
preprinted on sheets of cardboard first. Then, the 6-color process was printed on the fronts of these preprinted
sheets to create the ballplayers' images.


Regards,

T-Rex TED

[toppcat]

Ted, All:

Have been reading this thread with interest and been thinking about a few comments.

1)The pre-printed back observation has to be correct as it would seemingly be the reason for the legitimate factory overprints (why print a back in need of an overprint if the backs were printed last).

2) The five wide proof strip-it almost would indicate that many cards across in the array of an full sheet, or at least point that way. Any thoughts on why this is whem 6 is a very common divisor for the different series?

3) The vertical strips of identical players noted from misprints seems fairly prevalent. But for the misprints featuring different names/players, is there a tally of which series they are from?

[tedzan]

Q1.....My thoughts are, and this Johnson in my above scan appears to support this, that the
printing of the T206 fronts is a complex 6-color process. While the T-brand adv. on the back
is a one ink print; therefore, logic dictates that the backs were pre-printed first.

Q2.....The 5-card Wagner strip is a pre-production proof. I don't think we can conclude any
thing from it. I contend that the T206 sheets were formatted 12 cards across. I arrived at
this number when I came across some details of the track widths (19 inches) of early 20th
century printing presses typically used by Lithographic printers.

The number 12 fits in very nicely with the composition of the four Series......

150....156 cards

350....270 cards (6 is actually a better divisor here)

460....48 cards

So. Lgers....48 cards


Q3....I defer this one to Brian Weisner


TED Z

[E93]

I don't know about how many there were on a T206 sheet, but my guess, based on the high ratio, but not exclusive existence of miscuts with the same card on top and bottom is that sheets looked something like this:


ABCDEFG
ABCDEFG
ABCDEFG
ABCDEFG
ABCDEFG
ABCDEFG
HIJKLMN
HIJKLMN
HIJKLMN
HIJKLMN
HIJKLMN
HIJKLMN

They may have been wider or taller or whatever, but my guess is that there was repetition of rows something like this.
JimB

[E93]

I don't know about how many there were on a T206 sheet, but my guess, based on the high ratio, but not exclusive existence of miscuts with the same card on top and bottom is that sheets looked something like this:


ABCDEFG
ABCDEFG
ABCDEFG
ABCDEFG
ABCDEFG
ABCDEFG
HIJKLMN
HIJKLMN
HIJKLMN
HIJKLMN
HIJKLMN
HIJKLMN

They may have been wider or taller or whatever, but my guess is that there was repetition of rows something like this.
JimB

[mkdltn]

The stones that may have been used are still available today. The link below has some info on stone sizes. This list is from records of the quarry where the stones originated from.

http://www.polymetaal.nl/siteUK/shopukwork/enter.html

Lets take the smallest stone on that list, 12X16, this jives with a proof book that I have that has this very stone size written by the printer or prover on some of the proof pages. You could fit two sets of twelve quite nicely on each. twelve cards come to nearly 6X9 in size--the most common size of an inner cigar label. The Wagner proof strip with 5 cards might suggest 10 cards per set and 20 per working stone.

These would then be transferred in multiples to larger stones or metal plates.

[mkdltn]

The link in my last post just takes you to the home page, look under litho equipment and find the litho stones price history link.

[Jantz]

Toppcat - I have four scans of miscut T206s with two different names on the top/bottom. Of the four, only on one was I able to acquire the back info.

It was a Piedmont 350 ( can't tell by the scan what the factory number is though ).

Hope this helps,

Jantz

[tedzan]

DAVE

In response to your...."The vertical strips of identical players noted from misprints seems fairly prevalent.
But for the misprints featuring different names/players, is there a tally of which series they are from?"

I do not have any of the dis-similar cards you asked about; however, I know of quite a few of them, and
they all are from the 350 series. Not surprising, since there are approx. 2700 permutations in this series.

Here are some of the vertically similar t206's that I have. As is evident here, these "dual-name" cards can
be found across all the T206 series.



v..........................150 Series cards........................v...............460 Series....



.............^........................350 Series cards........................^


TED Z

[jimonym]

Ted, nice Cicotte.

Here's an Abbaticchio with Cicotte's name at the top. I believe it has a Piedmont 350 back. I'll double-check it tonight.

Edited to add I checked and it is indeed a Piedmont 350.
Perhaps Brian W. has non-350 series example. Brian?

[toppcat]

Nice scans guys-Ted 350 only on your non-matched misprints, eh? I agree that is not too surprising given the volume of cards in that series. I would think though, they could theoretically be found in any of the series runs.

[tedzan]

I will be very interested in your report regarding the back of your Abbaticchio/Cicotte.

I'll bet you (a Mr. Lincoln) it is either a Piedmont 350, Sweet Cap 350, Sovereign 350,
EPDG, or with rare possibility, an Old Mill.


TED Z

[tedzan]

I'm sure Brian W has several dis-similar named T206's.

The classic one is the half Phillippe over the half Engle. I'm sure you've seen it. I don't remember who owns it.
It, too, is a 350 series card.


Thanks for confirming the back of your Abbaticchio/Cicotte card.

TED Z

[jimonym]

Hi Ted.

I have indeed seen it. As a matter of fact, I own it.

[Brian Weisner]

Hi Ted, Jamie, etc,

Here is my Lundgren/Doolin Piedmont 150 back:



I know I have at least 1 more 150 back with a differnt name at the top...

Be well Brian

PS I'll try to post soon, but I've been really busy....

[Steve D]

The above Abbattichio/Cicotte and Lundgren/Doolin make me wonder if there could possibly be any miscut T206s out there with a partial "Wagner, Pittsburg" or "Plank..." on top out there waiting to be found.


Steve

[tedzan]

Thanks for posting your really "cool" cards.

Jamie....I forgot that you owned the Phillippe/Engle card.

Brian....I should have remembered that you had the Lundgren with Doolin's name on the top.

I guess this old dinosaur is getting quite forgetful in his old age.


T-Rex TED

[ethicsprof]

don't be so hard on yourself ole buddy.
with all the data from these most illuminative surveys readily available(from you!) to all who ask, you have no apologies to make!!!

many thanks for all the efforts.

best,

barry