1952 Topps Mantle Plate - Any Ideas?
 

Howdy - I'm looking for insight on this 1952 Topps Mantle brass-like plate.

A collector reached out to me saying that in the 80s, at his uncle's card shop, that was on Long Island, a gentleman gave this to him saying it was special and to hold onto it. He thought nothing of it until cleaning gout cards from his parent's house. However, he can't find anything about it.

I did reach out to a couple of board members via e-mail.

One said that their initial thought was a printing plate, not from Topps, as the image is grainy, but possibly for one of the smaller magazines back in the day; he said CPU came to mind when he saw it, but even that issue has a cleaner image, plus the banner text: https://www.worthpoint.com/worthoped...cpu-1811096817

Another was also skeptical that it was a Topps production piece.

Any ideas?

Nice. Steve B could provide some insight into your piece. I've texted him and hopefully he will chime in.

Generally those are cut out of metal rolls used for papers/magazines. What are the dimensions?

Shouldn’t any printing plate be reversed in image and text so when inked and printed it will be positive (image and text reading correctly)?

No, it depends on if the image is going from the plate to paper or plate to mat to paper.

The only chance is it is a later piece used to print a magazine or something. it is a complete clear image, not a pass as it should be. A authentic plate should be a black, cyan, magenta, yellow pass. It would not be a complete clear image unless used for something else or a fantasy piece.

This is one of my vintage plates which shows the single color pass

It's 3x4

It's not clear enough to be a printing plate unless it's for a very small publication that made their own.

Plates for offset printing are also usually coated aluminum.

I think it may be a roughly done piece from a plaque of some kind.

Thanks for the feedback!

I’ll let the owner know.