T206 Sheets

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Posted By: J Levine

I am fairly certain that it was a multiple of 12...T205s are far harder to distinguish by their print runs but two things jumped out at me in my research...the first was that there are 12 minor league players. These correspond to 12 short prints found in the Hassan and Piedmont series but not the Polar Bear series.

Joshua

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Posted By: Ted Zanidakis

Please keep analyzing the make-up of the T205 set.

I was aware of these 12 Minor Leaguers. When I sold my T205 set years ago, I kept these 12 cards (as I thought they were
a key aspect in studying the design of this set).

Thanks,

TED Z

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Posted By: Ted Zanidakis

Yesterday you asked....."Why didn't they say "156" subjects?"

I'll start with.....in 1909 American Lithographic Co. (ALC) also produced several non-sports T-card sets (Fish-100 cards,
Flags-200 cards, etc.). When they ventured into producing BB card premiums in 1909, their initial design intent was 150
Subjects (perhaps a compromise between their Fish and Flag sets). Given their intent to have 150, ALC first printed up
cardboard sheets of PIEDMONT 150 backs. However, when they finalized their designs for the 1st Series, they actually
printed the following......

155 Subjects....PIEDMONT 150......Incl. Jennings, Lundgren, Plank, Wagner

153 Subjects....SWEET CAPORAL 150 (Fac. 30)......Incl. Plank & Wagner....no Jennings & Lundgren

150 Subjects....SOVEREIGN 150......No Jennings, Lundgren, Plank, or Wagner (and possibly no Flick)


Note....I did not include the Magie error card, since it wasn't an intended design.


Good question, hopes this answers it.


TED Z

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Posted By: Ted Zanidakis

I recall that my T205 set had 210 cards in it......is that still considered a complete set ?

Or, are there additional "subtle" type of variations above a 210-card set ?

TED Z

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Posted By: J Levine

T205 Master set includes 220 cards which includes all the pose and print variations (like the Wilhelm, Hobby, Moran, etc.).

Joshua

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Posted By: Walter

Gentlemen:

Please allow me to muddy the waters a little bit. I collect the T59 Flag Set and one series from Recruit Little Cigars has overprints.

So far there are only 17 known cards out of the series of 50 with this overprint and all of them occur in Series 2. This begs the question of why only 17 cards? And to this question I have no answer. But allow me to throw out a hypothesis. The cards were printed on sheets that were 17 cards wide by 16 cards deep making each sheet 27.625 inches wide by 44 inches long. Each series of 50 was printed on 3 sheets with one double printed card (17*3 -1=50). Each row consisted of the same cards--17 different on each of the first 2 sheets and 16 plus one double print on the third sheet.

Theoretically with the Flag set, one of these 17 card sheets was the last sheets in the print run and were no longer needed at Factory 25. They were overprinted and sent to Pennsylvania Factory 240 thereby accounting for the 17 overprints that are known today.

I offer this because the size of the uncut sheet seems reasonable and most card sets with this standard tobacco sized card are 50 card sets. I can't see that American Lithographic would make a new setup for each set. It makes sense to me that they would try to standardize the layout.


Always looking for T59 Flag cards and T113 Types of Nations.
http://www.t59flags.com

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Posted By: barrysloate

If it helps at all, in my upcoming auction I have an Elberfeld portrait (New York) with Parent on the top.

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Posted By: PC

Interesting. If you are hypothesizing that an ACT print sheet was 27.625 inches wide, that would accout for 19 full size T206s across, with a little extra room for the outside borders of the sheet.

According the Standard Catalogue, T206s are 1-7/16 inches wide (that's 1.4375 inches wide). And 27.625 divided by 1.4375 is 19.217.

I suspect the actual ATC print sheet was a little wider than 27.625 inches, to provide a little more room for the sheet border. Anyone know the width of the Obak partial sheet above?

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Posted By: J Levine

Okay...to muck it up even more...the only set that I think I can now confirm as being cataloged completely in the T205 back print runs is Polar Bear. The magic number? Exactly 187 cards.

Joshua

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Posted By: Walter

And, oddly enough, 187 is divisible by 17. Thus, a polar Bear sheet of T205s could have been 17 cards wide by 12 cards in length with one of the rows being a double printed row.

The poster above who said he has 34 overprints in the Sweet Caporal series seems to add fuel to my 17 card theory.



Always looking for T59 Flag cards and T113 Types of Nations.
http://www.t59flags.com

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Posted By: Dave Hornish

This is very interesting stuff. And to assist, or not:

17x1=17
17x2=34
17x3=51
17x4=68
17x5=85
17x6=102
17x7=119
17x8=136
17x9=153
17x10=170
17x11=187
17x12=204
17x13=221
17x14=238
17x15=255
17x16=272
17x17=289
17x18=306
17x19=323
17x20=340
17x21=357
17x22=374
17x23=391
17x24=408
17x25=425
17x26=442
17x27=459
17x28=476
17x29=493
17x30=510
17x31=527

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Posted By: Ted Zanidakis

This statement of yours is incorrect......
"The poster above who said he has 34 overprints in the Sweet Caporal series seems to add fuel to my 17 card theory."

Apparently, you didn't read my earlier post here (10/14....5:37 PM).

I have a complete run of 35 cards of the Sweet Caporal 150, Factory 649 overprints.

Also, T206 surveys have confirmed that there are 35 cards in this subset.

TED Z

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Posted By: PC

For early tobacco cards printed by the ATC, I do not think the number of cards in a series or the total cards in a set, or the number of known variations (including the 17 T59s), has any bearing on how many cards are on a print sheet, or how those cards are arranged in rows and columns on a sheet.

The total numbers of each set/series vary, and when you look at the different back combinations, any number for a row is possible, and you can find justification for almost any reasonable number. 12, 17, 19 ... all are plausible.

Which is why I come back to the Obak sheet -- a 175 card set, which is not evenly divisible into its rows of 19, with multiple (and seemingly randon) repeating patterns of cards.

There was a method to the madness. We just don't know for certain what it was.


(Also, 187 divided by 17 is 11. )

[Archive]

Posted By: Ted Zanidakis

Speaking about POLAR BEAR backs, a T206 survey has confirmed 252 cards with this T-brand (to date).

This suggests a printing format of 12 cards across a row.

Obviously, any additional T206's with this back throws off this 12-card theory.


Here are four completely confirmed T206 T-brand sets......

PIEDMONT.......................522 subjects
SOVEREIGN......................411 subjects (includes 6 super prints with 460 backs)
SWEET CAP/30.................469 subjects
SWEET CAP 150/649 ovpt....35 subjects

Other confirmed T206 surveys (to date)

American Beauty 460....77 subjects
CYCLE 460..................87 subjects
EPDG........................274 subjects
OLD MILL..................338 subjects
POLAR BEAR..............252 subjects

Gentleman, it is obvious that from all these numbers, that we can not arrive at any definite conclusions,
at this point as to how the T206 sheets were formatted.



TED Z

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Posted By: Dave Hornish

Say you have 3 17 card sheets. One is different from the other two, the second and third are identical except for one column, which adds a player after one of the players on the second sheet is pulled. That gives 17 + 17 + 1 = 35, with 16 extra prints.

You get some short prints this way too, potentially.

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With lithography is it easier to print vertical columns of the same image? And then maybe "strip in" a row, or partial row of another subset of players?

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The 50 card multiple series makes sense, the backs even support it in the 150 and 350 series. But what to make of the 460 series then. New press sheet size for 1911?

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Were T209's produced somewhere other than ALC? Their first series size is off compared to other tobacco cards (slightly larger) and the second series back looks like the font ID'ing the factory is different than most ATC cards.

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Obaks are the same width as Standard Tobacco Size, but we have 19 cards across in 1910 (or is it 1911?).

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ALC had some industrial accidents. Here is a description of one (See page 1274, right side near the top, above PROPERLY HEAT) that may give insight into some machinery there. <a href="http://tinyurl.com/68hjle</a" target="_new" rel="nofollow">http://tinyurl.com/68hjle</a&gt;

And they changed their presses around 1919-one of them was dropped from a crane and fell through the sidewalk into a subway line in Manhattan. I had this link but have lost it. Will repost if I find it.

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Do they have to be printed vertically? I guess you could rotate a sheet 90 degrees.

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A quick scan of Michell & Forbes "American Tobacco Cards" shows set counts as follows for Standard Tobacco Size cards, years of issue shown if not roughly around 1909-11:

T34: 21 predates T206 by a couple of years
T35: 18 issued 1916
T39: 17 count unconfirmed
T42: 100
T43: 30
T58: 100
T59: 200 slightly taller than Standard Tobacco Size at 2 3/4"
T66: 56 (interesting) - tall at 2 9/16" - non standard fonts
T74: 35 (interesting) - tall at 2 9/16" - non standard fonts
T79: 100 wide at 1 3/4"
T80: 50
T81: 50 slightly taller than Standard Tobacco Size at 2 3/4"
T82: 50 slightly taller than Standard Tobacco Size at 2 3/4"
T84: 50 slightly taller than Standard Tobacco Size at 2 3/4"
T88: 267 slightly taller than Standard Tobacco Size at 2 3/4" ("Over 250 designs")
T113: 50 slightly taller than Standard Tobacco Size at 2 3/4"
T121: 250 (issued 1914 or later)
T126: 18 count unconfirmed, 2 3/4" tall
T175: 50 package design card issued circa 1900-02
T176: 24 package design card issued circa 1900-02
T177: 28 package design card issued circa 1900-02

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What is Standard Tobacco Size? Even Lipset seems to vacillate between 1 7/16" and 1 5/8 in width, with a set height of 2 5/8" Is either width then "Standard"?

I think Standard Tobacco Size could be from 1 7/16" to 1 1/2" wide, and 2 5/8" to 2 3/4" tall (with natural variance) based on this sampling. That's a 1/16" variance in width and 1/8" height.

[Archive]

Posted By: Mike

I hope I can help a little here.

I have been doing a lot of reading on the subject of chromolithograpy and its history and I will try to line out the process as I understand it as simply as possible. There are many things we will not know because we cannot travel back in time and see exactly what machines and process they used but with some research we can put together a pretty good picture.

The way many lithographed items were done was to do the work on smaller stones first. Today you can still find old stones with a single cigar label image on it. So the T206 cards may have been done in sets of say 6 or 12 on smaller stones. They were done this way when the print run was going to be very large and run over a long period of time. These stones were only used to make transfers from and to take proofs from. they were never used for the actual end product. when a job was complete these smaller stones with numbers identifying them were stored for use at a later date. It is much like today when we store a single digital image such as a business card with multiple Adobe InDesign layers in a file on the hard drive and duplicating it onto one large sheet when it comes time to print.

So for the T206 you would have a set of 6 images, six players, and for each set of six players there would be 9 separate stones, one for the key plate or stone. The Key is an outline drawing of the the original image it looks like a topographical map. The key also contains all of the crop marks for registry and and cutting purposes. In the case of the T206 cards the halftone image may have served double duty as the key. You would also have 8 separate stones for the colors yellow, light brown, buff, light blue, dark blue, pink, red and finally gray.

Now here is the key to all of this: transfer paper. Transfer paper was a form of paper with some type of gelatine coating. On google books you can find recipes and methods for making this kind of paper. It was also available premade at litho supplies houses. All of the big litho houses had tranfer departments with folks whose sole job it was to take transfers from the smaller stones and transfer them in multiples to the much larger stones that would run through the large steam presses. Modern printmakers will coat a sheet of paper with gum arabic and use that as transfer paper. Today you can also use photo copies and laser prints as transfers. You can draw directly onto the transfer paper with the usual litho inks and lay that onto a stone and run it through a press to transfer the image to the stone. There are books on google that mention James Mcneil Whistler the famous artist who made many prints actually doing his drawings on transfer paper and taking those to a master printer to have copies of his art made.

The way a transfer was done was to ink the small stone with black ink and apply the transfer paper to the stone which would then be run through a small dedicated press. You now have a piece of transfer paper which carries the image. You would now lay the transfer onto the large stone. This would be done with the same image multiple times using multiple images on the large stone so the image is repeated. The transfer paper is like a decal. It was wetted and the paper pulled off leaving just the ink image on the stone. The stone was now etched which is a whole other subject and I will not get into specifics. You can see the process on youtube and other places on the net. The large stone is now ready for printing.

For these cards you would have 9 different large stones with the multiple images, one for each color that needed to be in near perfect registration to one another.

In order to do a multiple color image a print of the large key plate would be made and varnished so as not to stretch. This large image was put on a sticking up plate. The transfers of each color taken from the small stones were then stuck up to this image using the crop marks to perfectly align the transfer sheets. The crop marks were then cut off. This large sticking up plate was laid down onto the large stone succsessfully sticking all of the transfers for that color to the large stone in perfect alignment to the key. The stone was now run through the press to transfer the images then the transfer paper was removed and the stone etched. This was repeated for each color on a different stone.

The jist of this is that you could probably identify the make up of the sets of images on the small stones but you would not be able to identify the makeup of a large sheet because the makeup of a large sheet could vary depending upon which job it was. Each time a job was started the smaller stones would be hauled out and transfered to the large sheet in what ever configuration was called for.That is why some cards have the same names top and bottom and sometimes they do not. It just depends on how the job was configured. The Images for the Wagner and Plank were probably never destroyed but when a transfer was pulled with their image it was probably just cut out and replaced with the transfers from another player.

I am fairly convinced that these were done on stone after reading a document on google books that states lithographers still used stones for special jobs such as those on harder paper like cardboard and when the image to be reproduced was a halftone image like that used on the T206 cards.


I am currently working on a web page that will lay out the process in detail, it will be heavily illustrated with images and diagrams. The page will also contain links to all the sites and documentation that I have found on the web.

If you did not understand a darn thing I said above a much better description of the processs can be found at this link below. I have read all the textbooks available for download and they are tough to read and understand. The article in this book is very well written in layman's terms and really made the whole thing click for me.

http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&id=bddAAAAAIAAJ&dq=the+building+of+a+book&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=w74m2LZcP3&sig=lCUJcvPQrbdesycEkaQf1800c_s&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result#PPA204,M1