Yeah, I bumped a thread from 2010
As you can see, I think I killed the thread so I'm trying to bring it back to life.
I am still not completely convinced that some of the factories didn't (*possibly*) play a part in some of the print runs of the ~back adds~.
Post #22 of this thread shows the factories did have printing equiptment. Plus, as you can see from my last post in this thread, there are many places to find information of people pointing to "some type of printing" going on at the factories.
Could this be why we see "miscut backs" with well centered fronts? I know Leon's masterpiece is an indicator that the ALC did print both fronts and backs, that makes all of the sense in the world (in the begining) but towards the halfway point (say 1910) couldn't they have tried to streamline things, and have some of the factories start printing the backs? Note some of the 1909 Piedmont backs are printed dark bold blue, and quite a few of the 350 series Piedmont seem a bit "lighter"in some cases- and, the 350-460 Piedmonts display an even "lighter" blue ink.
I'm just throwing this out there again, not saying I'm right, but should we take another look at this?
It seems to me it would make financial sense to pre print the fronts, ship them to the factories for the back printing, cut them and insert them into the packaging. It appears they had the printing equiptment and it was a simple one color pass. It also seems it wouldmake sense as to why they only used "one color" to print the backs instead of , say, two or three colors (for a more "vibrant" tobacco add........
Any takers?
Sincerely, Clayton