Brain has done some great work.
I would correct one thing though.
Printed areas are typically not removed from plates with Solvent, but by drawing over them with a limestone stick.(Stoning off) The changes in these cards are as far as I can tell too consistent and clean for that.
I believe they were done at the mask level, or earlier. Either making new halftones, or redoing the masks to make the changes.
Then making entirely new plates.
This was intentional, but the why is a bit of a mystery to me.
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Plates wear out, and new ones need to be made if the print runs are big enough. It's possible they hadn't saved the original masks, or that they did very little proofing at all and needed to make changes.
We disagree on the order of the printing, I think the pinks and the related ones with normal colors were first, the others later. We both have fairly convincing explanations though, so I figure it's a coin toss until some kind of proof turns up. (Like if Ted remembers when the pink ones showed up)
There are differences, usually major on all four colors, and rarely what I call a transitional type, where for example the blue that usually goes with a particular yellow is on a card that has a different yellow. Those would give a decent way of telling which came first, but so far I've only seen maybe 2-5.
Some cards the differences are very easy to spot, on others I still haven't found any.
I've been working on a virtual master set for years, and I'm not even halfway done. And haven't even started on boxing and football.
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