The printing process at the time was mostly manual and very hands -on. Lots of mistakes could make for different appearances, even the ones nearly everyone would call variations. Like the 79 Bump Wills , someone had to manually make the mask the plates were made from. And I'd bet the team banners were made in bulk and taped into place on the right mask. A bit of confusion, or a bit of a hurry at the end of the day and the wrong one gets put on. Most of the mistakes weren't that bad, stuff like names in white or yellow is just a matter of someone blocking out the name area on the yellow plate when they shouldn't.
Thomas NNOF is a special case, Until I read the thread about the matching cards I'd thought it was an isolated piece of stuff blocking a card, or a jam damaging the plate. But it's a plate made wrong and used when it really should have seen the scrap pile instead of the press.
Sometimes telling a print flaw apart from a difference on the plate isn't easy.
Add in some sloppiness with the inks - and for some reason they were very light on black often enough that it's fairly common - and you've got a lot of interesting cards.
The light black can be
-underinking, the layer is thinner and when it gets thin enough it isn't solid anymore.
- Disengaging the inking for black and the sheets after that get used. Not unusual on multi color presses. The offset blanket carries enough ink for a light pass or two. And if you shut down by shutting off the ink and letting a few sheets run through which makes cleaning the blanket easier or simply leaves it in a state where it's not covered in dried ink for the guy on the next shift. ....There you go.
- Actual lighter ink. The ink is sort of like grease only stickier. It's a base with color added, usually some form of carbon for a good solid black. If they used a cheap ink that had less pigment, or added a bunch of base to save a few bucks that would do it too.
Steve B
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