T206 scrap are very rare, but can be spotted a mile away(the obvious ones like this)......I am obsessed with them and can pick them out of a line up of 1000's (maybe literally millions)of T206....my eye has become "trained" to spot them after 15 + years of hunting......
T206 printer's scrap.....
little "clues" to the T206 lithographic printing process( a very intricate and artful style of printing using multiple layers)...
scrap have many distinguishing characteristics.....and have become century old "chase" cards if you will.... they are not even T206 technically.....they are "alternative" T206 if you will....a T206 "by product" of the litho process.......they are unique one-- of- a- kinds created by accidently by the printer.....a pearl in an oyster
......unique "snow flakes" accidentally created by the printers of these cards...I LOVE bottom "dipping" border like on the right bottom side.....not a dead give away, but a nice scrap characteristic commonly found on these.....
Printer's scraps were "scrap" sheets used by the printers at ATC to set the presses up....in 1909-1911 .....they were sheets that had mistakes on them already(wrong color, no advertisement, off registration, mis- aligned, misfed, miscut, double struck, wrong ink, ect,ect) instead of wasting perfectly good sheets to reduce costs......so when the printer screwed up a sheet, they tossed them aside in a "scrap" pile......these "garbage" sheets set aside were then used as "scrap" cardboard to set up the presses for printing other T206 or other issues printed in the ATC building in New York during this time frame(1909-1911)....
printer fills the ink wells, or adjusts the stones, or feeds cardboard in to test for correct adjustments.....printer grabs a "garbage" sheet to see if the registration is correct or enough ink is in the wells or whatever.....
he sends the "garbage" sheet through the press to see if everything looks good before printing on fresh cardboard....(this is where the magic happens
)....the printer uses the sheet once, tosses back in the pile....that particular sheet may have had 1 additional strike on it(creating a ghost image, double ad, ect)...
some garbage sheets were used multiple times , hence , creating "multiple" strikes of either the player, the ad, or both....the possibilities are simply endless!! after the sheets were used for this purpose, they were thrown away....either people recovered them from the trash, or the printers may have taken them home for there kids to play with ect.....the cards were then hand cut by whoever and there your scrap is born.....
each sheet becomes unique and has sister cards on them....these little puzzle pieces can be put back together sometimes to "re create" parts of original sheets....usually, the "weirder" more dramatic" ones get the most attention and big big bux.....but don't kid yourselves, this Marshall is no small card....
let's dissect a fairly easy scrap like this is to determine-
first clue-
1)SUPER FAT ASS BORDER(left front)
....unusual fatness in left front border..sick fatness...because when most of these scraps were cut from the scrap sheet, the person cutting them usually didn't take great care in sizing them up(altho some scrap are trimmed ultra neat, prob even re- trimmed at another date)....but if you look very very close above his beltline, that section left to right should far over measure the standard dimension of 1 7/16" ....id say at least a 1/16-1/8 inch wide by my eye from the scan.....altho some T206 were factory cut oversize, this definitely is NOT the case with this card.....
2)UNUSUAL HAND CUT (all around card)
....if this card measured oversize all around, then that would be a dead give away that it wasn't a factory cut card, or even trimmed from the factory....this card may measure short in the other dimensions, but has the "scrap" hand cut of "erratic" borders.....excellent....
3) Skewed Back Ad
extremely common on scrap(especially the pied 350's)....check out the "tilt" of the back Ad, in retro to the obverse
4) DEAD GIVE AWAY....THE 100 % determining factor that this card is an 100% authentic scrap- GREEN OVERPRINT BACK GROUND OF HUNTER ON FRONT-
the crème da la crème....this is no wst boys....the real deal there.....printer was setting up various colors in the print run....that green cut out of hunter is the icing on the cake...
thanks to our resident experts who figure this stuff out in minutes!!!(Jantz, Erick, Chris, Tim and the rest of you I call on and you know who you are
).....
Damn I want this card