Sunburned Groom... A question for the t206 experts here

[bn2cardz]

I recently ran across this Bob Groom T206. Though I already had a few Piedmont 350s and don't have the goal of collecting the set, I had to buy it because the color was off from any other Bob Groom I had seen and this intrigued me.



The scans aren't mine, but are from the seller. I do now have the card in my possession and the colors are really that saturated. My question is what causes the "sunburn" (over saturated) appearance? I have been able to find plenty of info on missing colors. This, though, seems to have an abundance of red, but not lacking anything. There even seems to be some extra red bleed on the back (it doesn't cause a "ghost" or anything else discernible).

Here is the way other the other Groom fronts look:

image from VCP

[Runscott]

Maybe if I bump your thread, Steve will see it

My thought is that the printer ran it twice with the same colors.

[bn2cardz]

I was wondering that myself Scott, but it seemed to me if it was ran through twice on one color the registration would be off (more than it is). I was wondering though if the magenta plate did come down twice though. If that is true wouldn't that mean the others on the sheet should be out there also somewhere?

I have been PMed a possible idea:
"Most of these cards went through different prints and adjustments. Throughout the "lifespan" of a card you can see several different variations, primarily with the colouring. They did add pinks (buffs) and purplish (reds) to cards that you can't find on earlier versions. This might just be the case, or this was a first run with extra ink or a different pigment hue to the ink used on that one run."

This scenario also makes me think there should be others out there with this print variation.

[Runscott]

Originally Posted by bn2cardz

This scenario also makes me think there should be others out there with this print variation.

Andy, I have seen these before - I'll dig through my old card pics and see what I can find.

[bn2cardz]

Originally Posted by Runscott

Andy, I have seen these before - I'll dig through my old card pics and see what I can find.

Cool. I figured there had to be other oversaturated t206 cards, yet I haven't been able to find any. As mentioned above, I only seemed to be able to find missing color variations, not added color variations.

I also just haven't been able to find info on what caused it. I had my own guess about it being double printed, but I couldn't think of why the printer would have felt the need to do that (and again how the register stayed fairly clean).

[steve B]

The ink colors were hand mixed, and were at least into the 1980's. So a certain red would be a basic red plus a bit of some other colors to alter it just a bit. So if the press operator mixed a dark batch that day or had some leftover from whatever he did before that he decided to use up that would do it. That's the most likely explanation.

Sloppy cleanup between colors would also do that.

Or if they ran red ink on the tan plate.

Registration once adjusted will stay in place accurately, even from one sheet to the next. A double printing of one color is possible, but unusual.

There's a few other odd things that could cause that, but they usually leave other signs that I'm not seeing.

Have you got a high res scan 800-1200dpi? That will show enough detail to get a better idea of which thing happened.

And if someone has a high res scan of a regular one that would help too. I don't have Groom yet.

Steve B

[bn2cardz]

I finally acquired a comparison groom at a decent price with the same back.

I thought I would scan them together so that you can see it from the same scanner and color management system.

I have these scanned in at 1200 dpi for those who may want to have higher resolution.

[bn2cardz]

I went and bought a few more Grooms for comparison. I have also looked for other cards that appeared to have extra ink. Yet everytime I bought another card that seemed more vibrant or darker it turned out to just be a scan/monitor thing.

So does anyone else have cards with extra ink that changes the tone of the card this drastically? I assume there should have been at least a sheet of cards with this same anomaly. With as much attention as cards with missing ink gets I am surprised that extra ink cards get overlooked. At least with the "extra" pass cards (I assume there are more) I know this couldn't have been caused by glue (as is common with missing color cards).

Maybe it is something that seems more obvious in person than it does on each person's monitor.


Anyways here is a new scan with 4 more Grooms, with the middle card being the extra pass of magenta card. These were scanned at the same time with the only thing tweaked was adding the reverse of the cards to the scan.

[Runscott]

I've seen several 'extra pink face' Grooms since you started this thread...and before.

[Brian Weisner]

I've seen a lot of cards with extra ink..... Here's one:




Be well Brian

[Runscott]

Ahh, the 'Dove of Peace' Ritchey variation!

[bn2cardz]

Originally Posted by Runscott

I've seen several 'extra pink face' Grooms since you started this thread...and before.

Great. I would love to see them. I am not being sarcastic or cynical. I really would. I have tried searching for them and went ahead and bought a few Grooms (as pictured above) and can't seem to find them.

I am genuinely curious about this.

Edited to add: I don't have a large pool of photos and cards personally owned to go through. I dabble around from set to set, more like a type collector. So I don't have a lot to compare to. I just know that since picking up the card and saw how extremely different it looked from any other one I have seen I thought I would have been able to see more by now. I just haven't though.