This came across my Twitter, '52 Mantle, need some help
 

and he's not a member here so I figured I'd try to help him out because I don't have an answer for him and I'm hoping someone here does. I have a background in illustration & what I see is is "rubylith", a very old skool way of masking things off for printing that was used before the digital age & desktop publishing but I am not 100% certain. I am however about 85% sure.

Who would even authenticate something like this? I don't even know where to begin.....
Thanks all!

Tweet is here https://twitter.com/Patbaseball7/sta...23097513086976

https://i.imgur.com/HcG3IUZ.png

https://i.imgur.com/U5ESgMj.png

https://i.imgur.com/MswxzAf.png

https://i.imgur.com/P4j3aSi.png

https://i.imgur.com/TSWuBkE.png

That's a strange one.

To me it looks like a color negative.
It could also be a transparency that has faded. (Most color film from the era up till the early 80's will do that. )

The question then is what it was for.

Topps did a lot of stuff that the place I worked never did.

I don't think it's part of the mask for making the plates, those would be only one color, and would have less space around the edges since the cards had to be close enough.

If I had to guess, it might be a proof made from the individual color separations so they could make a positive print to verify how it would actually look.

We discussed this in another thread six months ago when he first showed it on Twitter. There were no definitive answers on that thread either.

Sent from my SM-G9900 using Tapatalk

Does it have the missing pixel?