I got to get a look at Steves Knabe a while back when he had questions. Nice card. The questions were about the odd left side of the panel that says candy, and if it looked real.
It sure is, and looking at it alongside a few other cards led me to some interesting things. And made me look at the few caramel cards I have.
To save time - I type pretty slowly- I'll just paste in what I wrote in an email
I figured I’d let you know about the things I found interesting. (with one corrected typo)
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First, they are all genuine, Some of what’s interesting is what I thought was not standard, but they’re obviously from different sources and the odd stuff is consistent.
The fronts are all typical 1910 ish lithography. Halftone for the picture, solid colors combined with the precursor to halftones which I cant think of the name of just now.
The backs are where it gets interesting.
Lithography typically prints with a very even flat quality to it. These show a line of darker print around most of the printed areas. This is most visible on the lighter ones, but is there in all of them.
That is typical of typography, especially on larger type the force involved in printing forces some of the ink on the type or print block to the sides. It’s generally referred to as squeeze out.
(Printers aren’t always the most imaginative bunch)
The various flaws in the backs make more sense with typography.
For example
The left of the candy panel on Knabe looks to be where that line is either breaking and about to come off, or has broken off and been reattached
On both of the darker ones the upper left corner is mush thicker, but the edges are uneven. That’s most likely from “stuff” – squeezed out ink, random tiny paper debris etc building up on the
Print block until it’s at the level of the surface so it gets inked and prints.
Each one shows potentially broken letters especially the Bender.
I checked my tiny supply of E cards, and to my surprise many of them showed similar signs of typography.
But none showed one of the key signs, that being the printed area being impressed into the stock. That can happen with some types of typography. German stamps were all typographed into the 1920’s and often don’t
show those impressions. But their “plates” were shallow, and more like etchings where only the high spots were printed (instead of the whole thing being etched and the high spots wiped clean as in art.
I’d be surprised if the places printing cards used that system, but it’s possible.
What I think is more likely is a hybrid type, where the print block printed to a roller which then printed the stock, so offset typography.
I’ll have to ask the print museum if squeeze out could translate across the offset process. I suspect it can.
There are a lot of avenues to explore just in E92, and most in the crofts candy. If the damaged letters are plate damage they will be consistent. So other Benders will have the same group of damaged letters.
Or, other cards from the same place on a different sheet will have those damaged letters. Damage on typography blocks tends to be progressive, so you might see a series of them as those letters came apart.
It's probable the Crofts candy was all done using the same print blocks for the backs. It should be possible to figure out which color was done first. My guess would be the order is black/blue/red
It should also be possible to sort the set into groups by comparing flaws to checklists and pop reports. Maybe not precisely, but just looking at set size in general, 40 and 50 could both be small sheets of 10 different players.
But 62 doesn’t fit that at all. So it’s not entirely that simple.
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Steve B
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