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DavidThe halftone printing process, which is still used today to make baseball cards, translates an image (whether photograph, painting, drawing or other) into a pattern of tiny dots both on the printing plate and the resulting print. The process was not introduced commercially until the 1880s, and didn’t work well with lithography until about 1920. The majority of 19th century baseball cards were made with Pre-halftone technology.
As an example, the N167 Old Judges were woodcuts. Woodcut printing is an ancient form of printing, and the printing plates for these Old Judges were carved in essentially the same way as was done in ancient China (where the woodcut was probably invented). In the process, the craftsman uses handheld knives and gouges to carve out the design in a smooth surfaced block of wood. The printing ink is placed on the smooth areas left, and wood block and is pressed against the paper creating the print. The resulting print will have no dot pattern …. And any modern Larry Frisch or computer reprint will necessarily have a finer dot pattern.
Even a handful of 20th century cards were made without the half-tone process, and will not have a dot pattern.
In half-tone printing, the ‘dots per inch’ is consciously set by the printer. The printer can simply say, “I want 12 dots per inch today” or “I want 24 dots per inch today.” The dots per inch that physically appear in the print is the result of the screen that is used to project the image through. A finer screen will create more dots per inch, and visa versa. In fact, as time passed and technology advanced, printers were generally able to made prints with a finer dot patter (more dots per inch). As an example, the 2002 Topps 1971 Topps Hank Aaron reprint has a finer dot pattern, than his original 1971 Topps. There is no question that a reprint can’t have better resolution (clarity to the eye) than the original. However, a reprint can have lower resolution, yet have more dots per inch.