What is the origin of Frank Thomas NNOF?

[saucywombat]

Having contemplated this issue in depth and given that a lot of information is buried under the sheer size and volume of the PSA Forum thread, I have copied a 2017 post I made there regarding the source of the error in the printing process.

ITS HONESTLY VERY COMPLICATED! And not in any way a sort of a Guttenberg press sort of affair, especially at the volume that Topps was producing what is essentially cardboard packaging. If you can take the time to read all of this and the related links, its very interesting in that you will see the issues that create every type of printing error that we as collectors find on baseball cards.

If you aren't interested in reading, essentially the Thomas and related errors come from either the chemical developing of the photographic negative of the cards for the black plate or the subsequent step of chemically etching those negatives onto the physical metal plate.

The physical metal plates accept ink from the blankets. Due to the issues with the plate itself, the plate did not accept black ink from the blankets (in the areas we find the errors). The plate itself literally is worn out by the production process and must eventually be replaced. Topps would have worn out many plates during any given years production. This wearing out process explains the slight variances between the cards.

IMO - Dave
************************************************** *********

Well first let me say that the four color printing process, a variation of gravure printing, that produces baseball cards, most commercial cardboard packaging and newspaper, is a process that an immense amount of variables play in to. A quick web search will reveal a great deal of scholarly (include complex physics) energy is devoted to perfecting the process. Think fluid dynamics, capillary actions, heat, pressure, static electricity, viscosity, paper quality, ideal chemical properties, speed of rollers, thickness or rollers, tension between rollers, etc.

It defies a short explanation so if anyone is so inclined, check out printwiki.org/Gravure
Pretty interesting

Another good site which shows common defects in the 4 color process (and basic catalog of every PD in the history of Topps) see http://www.offsetprintingtechnology....roubleshooting

Gravure printing involves at its heart the engraving of an image onto a printing plate. in the mid-19th century processes were developed to allow for the chemical etching of photographic images into metal. This allowed for the first time for photographic images to be accurately reproduced through press printing (as it was not possible to perfectly reproduce by hand on to the plate). Interestingly today it is possible to physically etch an image with digital technology which can eliminate the chemical process but not possible in 1990.

So at some point Topps photographed and developed the the "F" plate black image. This is when the most likely error occurred that produced the blackless area on the F sheet.

Undeveloped patches are a known problem in developing photographic prints, which would be loosely defined as an area of the negative that has been unaffected by processing solutions. This may have gone unnoticed and the image transferred to the plate.

Also a possibility is that a chemical process is used to etch the photographic negative into the plate. So a perfectly good image can be distorted if the chemical etching process does not go well. I think this is probably what we are looking at with the "F" plate. In this example of the process you can easily see how bubbling or streaking of the sort present on the "F" sheet are easily made during the application of the image to the roller plate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwPVKJmElbU

The image in the video is known as a "resist". Problems that occur in rotogravure printing can include the resist not being properly applied. The video above shows a simplified process (usually the resist stays adhered longer to the plate for the image to be properly transferred). The resist usually requires a more involved process for stripping it away from the plate. Sometimes the resist (or parts there of) remain adhered to the plate. This is a very plausible explanation for the errors. To me it seems clear from the type of blackless areas produced and the quantity in which they were produced point clearly to an issue created by the production of the photographic image that produced the resist or its application or removal from the black "F" plate.

[ALR-bishop]

Great post Dave, thanks for the info

[West]

Originally Posted by saucywombat

Having contemplated this issue in depth and given that a lot of information is buried under the sheer size and volume of the PSA Forum thread, I have copied a 2017 post I made there regarding the source of the error in the printing process.

I'm still confused by the digression into gravure printing. I agree that the cause of the error was an improperly exposed/damaged plate. As we have mentioned in the past, that is the only way the NNOF was reproduced 500-1000X and all copies are virtually identical. However, the Topps employee I spoke to told me they used offset lithography printing - ie a printing plate created from a mask of negatives (I'm following Steve's theory here that an obstruction - tape, etc- in the platemaking process prevented the black plate from being properly exposed). In gravure a cylinder is engraved with cells which carry ink - seems a lot different than offset lithography. Also, it says gravure prints hexagons, while offset lithography gives the dot design - an example of which can be found on the very distinct 1990 Topps colored borders.

[saucywombat]

Originally Posted by West

I'm still confused by the digression into gravure printing. I agree that the cause of the error was an improperly exposed/damaged plate. As we have mentioned in the past, that is the only way the NNOF was reproduced 500-1000X and all copies are virtually identical. However, the Topps employee I spoke to told me they used offset lithography printing - ie a printing plate created from a mask of negatives (I'm following Steve's theory here that an obstruction - tape, etc- in the platemaking process prevented the black plate from being properly exposed). In gravure a cylinder is engraved with cells which carry ink - seems a lot different than offset lithography. Also, it says gravure prints hexagons, while offset lithography gives the dot design - an example of which can be found on the very distinct 1990 Topps colored borders.

Well I'd say the point of the post is not to demonstrate that a gravure method was used vs. offset lithography and that the references to gravure, by means of internet ready information, were the clearest way to demonstrate the idea of how printing made the leap from etched images to being able to accurately reproduce photographic images on a plate. I would trust your assertion regarding the use of offset lithography.

With either offset lithography or gravure (in 1990) a chemical process is required to transfer the image from the negative into a metal plate. Full stop.

My point being this is my opinion on where the error originates. It was a chemical issue that relates to the image being engraved on the plate. How the ink and/or image is then impressed or transferred to cardboard stock is not an issue.

This would correlate with the visual we have from the totality of the error area. It resembles nothing. It is an irregular fluid area, almost like you poured water on a pane of glass.

I do not understand the desire to relate all this to a piece of tape or cardboard obstruction, which the error area in no way resembles.

Perhaps it's a better narrative that more people could relate to that a careless or incompetent worker carelessly or foolishly wasn't paying attention to a piece of tape or cardboard, rather than a very esoteric discussion of offset lithography methodology and common mass production issues.

[West]

Originally Posted by saucywombat

Well I'd say the point of the post is not to demonstrate that a gravure method was used vs. offset lithography and that the references to gravure, by means of internet ready information, were the clearest way to demonstrate the idea of how printing made the leap from etched images to being able to accurately reproduce photographic images on a plate. I would trust your assertion regarding the use of offset lithography.

With either offset lithography or gravure (in 1990) a chemical process is required to transfer the image from the negative into a metal plate. Full stop.

My point being this is my opinion on where the error originates. It was a chemical issue that relates to the image being engraved on the plate. How the ink and/or image is then impressed or transferred to cardboard stock is not an issue.

This would correlate with the visual we have from the totality of the error area. It resembles nothing. It is an irregular fluid area, almost like you poured water on a pane of glass.

I do not understand the desire to relate all this to a piece of tape or cardboard obstruction, which the error area in no way resembles.

Perhaps it's a better narrative that more people could relate to that a careless or incompetent worker carelessly or foolishly wasn't paying attention to a piece of tape or cardboard, rather than a very esoteric discussion of offset lithography methodology and common mass production issues.

Thank you for explaining! That makes a ton more sense. I believe your first hypothesis seems likely - "Undeveloped patches are a known problem in developing photographic prints, which would be loosely defined as an area of the negative that has been unaffected by processing solutions. This may have gone unnoticed and the image transferred to the plate."

The fact that the blackless area does resemble a fluid substance seems to point towards some kind of chemical resist with the negative as you mentioned. Considering the existence of the smaller partial blackless errors also found in the general wherabouts of NNOF packs, do you think the "chemical resist" hypothesis is still likely? I always wondered what sequence of events could produce both types of errors, and what this tells us about the causation.

We have the NNOF press run, with 14 affected cards. Two blue plate scratches run vertically down the uncut sheet, one goes down column 4, and is visible on the Nolan Ryan, Kenny Rogers, Zeile, Steve Olin, Ventura and Canale. The other goes down column 5 and can be seen on Steve Searcy, Bob Knepper, Tapani, and Assenmacher.
Another press run has small blackless areas and fainter blue plate scratches. You can only see the blue line on the Tapani and the Nolan Ryan. The blackless areas are small and located on the Biggio and Thomas (pictured below), Tapani, Morris and Lawton.
A third press run is similar but has even smaller blackless area on the Lawton.
A fourth press run has blackless areas that can only be seen on a high resolution scanner. I have examples from all four press runs if you would like to see scans.

[steve B]

Offset lithography and gravure are entirely different processes. Gravure is more like intaglio (engraving) than lithography.

The basics of it, that the black plate wasn't made correctly is correct.

In Offset lithography the blanket doesn't put the ink on the plate, but accepts it from the plate. The plate gets it from the inking rollers.
Ink fount/inking rollers/plate/blanket/substrate.

Here's the process for making an aluminum offset lithography plate.
With a few small changes this is what was done at the shop I worked for.
Like we had the negatives and masks taped together along with the registration marks. And our plates were a different color.
Not any big difference
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yr1-CCpvB74

Part 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXA8WkEORM8

Originally Posted by saucywombat

Having contemplated this issue in depth and given that a lot of information is buried under the sheer size and volume of the PSA Forum thread, I have copied a 2017 post I made there regarding the source of the error in the printing process.

ITS HONESTLY VERY COMPLICATED! And not in any way a sort of a Guttenberg press sort of affair, especially at the volume that Topps was producing what is essentially cardboard packaging. If you can take the time to read all of this and the related links, its very interesting in that you will see the issues that create every type of printing error that we as collectors find on baseball cards.

If you aren't interested in reading, essentially the Thomas and related errors come from either the chemical developing of the photographic negative of the cards for the black plate or the subsequent step of chemically etching those negatives onto the physical metal plate.

The physical metal plates accept ink from the blankets. Due to the issues with the plate itself, the plate did not accept black ink from the blankets (in the areas we find the errors). The plate itself literally is worn out by the production process and must eventually be replaced. Topps would have worn out many plates during any given years production. This wearing out process explains the slight variances between the cards.

IMO - Dave
************************************************** *********

Well first let me say that the four color printing process, a variation of gravure printing, that produces baseball cards, most commercial cardboard packaging and newspaper, is a process that an immense amount of variables play in to. A quick web search will reveal a great deal of scholarly (include complex physics) energy is devoted to perfecting the process. Think fluid dynamics, capillary actions, heat, pressure, static electricity, viscosity, paper quality, ideal chemical properties, speed of rollers, thickness or rollers, tension between rollers, etc.

It defies a short explanation so if anyone is so inclined, check out printwiki.org/Gravure
Pretty interesting

Another good site which shows common defects in the 4 color process (and basic catalog of every PD in the history of Topps) see http://www.offsetprintingtechnology....roubleshooting

Gravure printing involves at its heart the engraving of an image onto a printing plate. in the mid-19th century processes were developed to allow for the chemical etching of photographic images into metal. This allowed for the first time for photographic images to be accurately reproduced through press printing (as it was not possible to perfectly reproduce by hand on to the plate). Interestingly today it is possible to physically etch an image with digital technology which can eliminate the chemical process but not possible in 1990.

So at some point Topps photographed and developed the the "F" plate black image. This is when the most likely error occurred that produced the blackless area on the F sheet.

Undeveloped patches are a known problem in developing photographic prints, which would be loosely defined as an area of the negative that has been unaffected by processing solutions. This may have gone unnoticed and the image transferred to the plate.

Also a possibility is that a chemical process is used to etch the photographic negative into the plate. So a perfectly good image can be distorted if the chemical etching process does not go well. I think this is probably what we are looking at with the "F" plate. In this example of the process you can easily see how bubbling or streaking of the sort present on the "F" sheet are easily made during the application of the image to the roller plate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwPVKJmElbU

The image in the video is known as a "resist". Problems that occur in rotogravure printing can include the resist not being properly applied. The video above shows a simplified process (usually the resist stays adhered longer to the plate for the image to be properly transferred). The resist usually requires a more involved process for stripping it away from the plate. Sometimes the resist (or parts there of) remain adhered to the plate. This is a very plausible explanation for the errors. To me it seems clear from the type of blackless areas produced and the quantity in which they were produced point clearly to an issue created by the production of the photographic image that produced the resist or its application or removal from the black "F" plate.

[steve B]

What I'm saying is that something - tape, a paper scrap, whatever that was opaque got into the machine that exposes the plate. and prevented the areas that got missed from being exposed.

Could it be that the person making the plate missed an area that big while using the developer? Possibly. Large shops, which would have been Topps or whoever they used might have had an automatic plate developer.

[West]

Originally Posted by steve B

What I'm saying is that something - tape, a paper scrap, whatever that was opaque got into the machine that exposes the plate. and prevented the areas that got missed from being exposed.

Could it be that the person making the plate missed an area that big while using the developer? Possibly. Large shops, which would have been Topps or whoever they used might have had an automatic plate developer.

Very informative video in your last post. I often wondered how plates were shipped and packaged. I see the plates in that video are stacked in a package of 100 or so with opaque tissue paper between them that prevents light exposure from damaging the light sensitive coating on the plates.

I've always felt that the existence of the smaller partial blackless errors holds the key to understanding the cause of the larger blackless errors. For instance, there are up to 4 variations on the Marcus Lawton error:




Tapani:







The NNOF plate blackless images of Tapani and Lawton I got from the web. I don't have copies of these cards but all the other cards pictured came from packs that also produced cards from the NNOF print run - partial blackless Frank Thomas, a blackless John Hart and Jim Acker, Nolan Ryan and Kenny Rogers blue line card, etc. Also, when Rookiewax on the CU boards first found NNOF in a case in 2009, that case also produced partial blackless variations of the Tapani and Lawto, so we know they are related. Not only that, but two of the Tapanis also bear the blue line (plate scratch) that is a signifier of the NNOF run. All cards have varying degrees of blackless. And if you look at the last couple Tapanis and Lawtons, you can see they have blackless areas that are similar but shifted down 1/2". The last images are cards I found that at first appeared normal (the error had been found, a repair had been made, new plates ordered up, and printing resumed). But on second look I found the most minute areas of missing black ink (see arrows)

So, would this evidence point more to a negative (mask) being damaged or the plate? I feel it is more likely that a series of plates were damaged or exposed. Is it possible that a series of plates that were stacked on top of each other were exposed or damaged in the same general area, with the top plate being the NNOF plate, the next plate down the partial blackless variations that I have pictured, and additional plates affected to smaller degrees. Also, we know that most printers printed all black ink one day, then a different color the next. I have found green sheet blackless errors that reside in the exact same location on the uncut sheet as orange sheet NNOF errors:




Curious what some of our printing experts think of these variations.

[swarmee]

Your pictures aren't showing up.

[West]

Fixed, I think. I was trying to do it through Google Photos but linking photos through a message board doesn't work.

[hockeyhockey]

https://www.ebay.com/itm/1990-Topps-...4AAOSwblBfQbVa

looks like a pack is for sale from a 1990 printing error box...if anyone here buys it, please share the findings.