As I said in my initial, it’s my opinion that many of the transfers being discussed happened during the storage of the cards and not the printing process. This is based on looking at many examples of T206 transfers and the conclusions that I have drawn from doing so. I’m sure others will have a different opinion and I don’t begrudge them that. It’s all good information to consider.
The card below is a great example of what I believe to be a transfer that happened during storage.
Given how the T206 cards were printed and packed for distribution to their factories, I can’t come up with a plausible explanation for how a wet Sweet Caporal back would have transferred onto a Polar Bear card at the press. The Polar Bear and Sweet Caporal cards went to different factories and couldn’t have been printed on the same press without the stone being changed. It makes little sense to intermingle the product after printing and then to resort it for distribution after cutting. Anything is possible, I just don’t find it likely.
Next if you overlay an image of a Sweet Caporal back onto the Overall you see where the top card only covers half of the right side border of the Overall. A close look at the unaltered Overall image shows a distinct line running down the middle of the right hand border. I believe that his was where the edge of the top card stopped leaving the remainder of the Overall border exposed. The edge between the two was a place for discoloration or grim to build up and produce the visible line.
I don’t think that this transfer process can be reproduced by soaking a card for a number of hours or even weeks. I don’t profess to know the recipe but I would guess humidity, pressure, and time would all play a role. Without the right mixture it’s unlikely that we could reproduce the results. I think this process was extremely slow and the factor of time would limit most of us from being able to reproduce the results.
I’m not saying wet sheet transfers don’t exist. I just don’t believe all transfers happened at the time of printing. Again it’s just my opinion shared for the discussion.