Did any hand made plate for any set ever have to be replaced?

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Posted By: Gilbert Maines

Resulting in a different hand made plate being used to continue production.

Also:

Were different hand made plates used to produce concurrent "identical" cards at two or more printing facilities for any set?

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Posted By: Bob

Supposedly the plate with the Plank card on it "cracked" which resulted in the scarcity of T206 Planks. Why it didn't result in a scarcity of the other cards on this plate, if this is true, is a mystery.

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Posted By: MVSNYC

T206:

Nodgrass
Murr'y
Shappe
?

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Posted By: boxingcardman

have marked differences in their back text which came from different plates being used. As noted in my Old Cardboard article, it is possible to use these text differences to some extent to date the various print runs.

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Posted By: Gilbert Maines

My point of course is that if you take a plate, print some cards with it, then hand tool a near duplicate plate, it is not an exact duplicate. And each plate therefore produces its own unique variation of a card (front or back or both). If this has happened which cards has it happened with?

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Posted By: Ted Zanidakis

TBOB

Th Plank "broken plate myth" is exactly that......a myth. You have to read my T206 Plank theory, which
is based on some research I did regarding American Caramel Co. forcing ATC to remove Plank....and also,
not to print the majority of Phila. A's in the T206 1st series issue (150 Subjects).

GIL

The 1933 Goudey Ruth (#144) was double-printed on Goudey's 24-card sheet....he was printed with two
separate plates.
Same goes for the 1952 Topps Mantle, J Robby and Thomson (on their 100-card Hi# sheet). The fronts
of the double-printed J Robby and the Thomson cards do not appear to show any printing differences.
However, there are very distinct differences on the the fronts of the two Mantle cards on this sheet.

TED Z

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Posted By: ItsOnlyGil

It would be important that the plates were hand tooled, because machine tooled plates are far less likely to produce a discernable variation, I think (but I don't know).

However, the differences in the Mantle are interesting, can you show an example?

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Posted By: Ted Zanidakis

GIL

There are two obvious differences between these Mantle's due to differences in the printing plates.
And, I'm not referring their background color, which appears different due to my scanner.

You tell me the differences ?

TED Z

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Posted By: J Hull

I own a copy of the “Practical Text Book of Lithography,” published in 1912, which was basically a handbook for pressman apprentices. We have to keep in mind that lithography is a process based on the repulsion of grease and water. The plate used to apply ink to tobacco card stock was not itself engraved in any way. Instead there was a multi-step process by which an artist’s concept for a picture ended up as a series of lithographic printing plates, one for each color in the image. I haven’t read the book in a couple years, but glancing at it again tonight I found this sentence which pretty neatly lays it out: “It is found most practical for commercial lithography to first draw the design on paper, then engrave it in reverse on stone, and then transfer it to the printing plate by the use of transfer paper.” The transfer paper was specially treated to absorb greasy substances from the engraved stone and apply them to the smooth plate that was installed in the press. The plate in the press was then dampened with water, and it was the interplay of the ink with the water and grease portions of the transferred image that was used to create the picture on the cardboard stock.

From a practical standpoint what this means is that any changes to images or type needed to be done on the engraved stone itself, not the actual printing plate. I’ve long suspected that these engraved stones were small and consisted only of a single card’s image. This way they could be laid out in a grouping, transfer paper applied, and a sheet of cards produced. Then they could later be rearranged into a different grouping and a differently configured sheet would be produced. The cards on the different sheets would be identical, except insofar as the inks used could be slightly different or lighter or darker just based on the amount of ink adhering to the printing plates at any particular moment. Taking T206s as an example, the cards produced in the 150 series may have been grouped on sheets in one way, and then months later when printed again as 350 series cards could have been grouped entirely differently. This is one of the reasons, I strongly suspect, that it’s so difficult to try to figure out which cards came off of the same sheets. Practically, identical images could easily have come off of several different printing plates.

Jamie

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Posted By: Gilbert Maines

Well Ted, to me the differences are not obvious, as evidenced by the fact that in several minutes of study I do not notice any difference which can not be dismissed as a scan quality variation. I'm sure that once you point them out, I will forever more find them obvious as well.

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Posted By: Gilbert Maines

Jamie:
There was a progression in the manufacturing process applied to coins which included an original approach of hand engraving each die, which subsequently evolved, with metallurgical awareness, into a process which utilized an engraved master hub as the source for die cutting.

I believe that this history may also apply to the technical progression associated with printing as well. But I do not know. However, I do note the following commentary "Allen & Ginters, Buchner Gold Coin, Goodwin Champions and cartoon trade cards were 'handmade' lithographs. Handmade means the designs were made directly onto the printing plate by an artist using special hand held tools".

This has been excerpted from the new Net54 "detecting ..." resource. It is possible that your 1912 reference material refers to technology and approaches which existed at that time, but may not have existed throughout the preceeding card manufacturing era.

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Posted By: 1880nonsports

was the same in concept - for the Ginter and early chromo/stipple/and whatever produced cards - the images were produced directly from the stone. The difference in the T cards is the the heavy and cumbersome stones no longer had to be moved around - and enjoyed a greater survival rate. No guarantee whether written or implied relative to the aforementioned - I have seen the early stones in person and have tried in recent times to learn more about printing and production used on my cards. I believe we as a whole (the sports and non sports hobby) need more intensive focus on printing techniques and distribution issues. Someone or a couple of people that are familiar with the early print processes and also have a dedication to cards need to help in synthesising some of the information out there. If we can gather up all the little pieces I'm convinced it will shed some new light on some of the many questions still unanswered about early issues.

(edited to add a big TY to David R. - I always appreciate his many additions on these subject areas and others and didn't mean to slight him by suggesting we need "someone" as I wrote above. Besides, I regularly track his record setting # edits per post....

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Posted By: davidcycleback

With an 1880s baseball lithograph printing plate, if there was damage they could fix it up. This might cause changes the graphics.

Even in the old, old days, famous artists like Durer and Rembrant changed the the original printing plate. Sometimes this was because the plate wore down from printing and detail had to be added. Sometimes it was because there was a new purpose and the text needed to be changed. Art historians date many famous old prints in part by the graphic changes, as they know when the plate changes were made. Even with Rembrandt era woodcuts, there were techniques to add plugs of wood to parts of the woodblock plate were miscut or otherwise damaged. So prints variations can come from the same, original printing plate.

As text, and perhaps border lines, are usually on its own printing plate, you can change the text without touching the player image plates. For the Magie error, the printers only had to quick fix the plate with names.

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Posted By: Ted Zanidakis

The top Mantle in my post is a flawless copy (Type I).

The lower Mantle (TYPE II) has two subtle, but distinctive "flaws" relative to the Type I.

1st....the Name Box yellow-star border is somewhat ragged....seen above the lettering "KEY MA".

2nd....there is a haze (or a gloss) on his right arm.

Perfectionist, that collect this card in high-grade, will pay more for the Type I example.

TED Z

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Posted By: Gilbert Maines

Ted, in the t206 set, weren't "identical" card fronts produced at different locations employing different plates?
And I guess - different stones.

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Posted By: Gilbert Maines

Henry:

Why did the stones have to be moved around prior to t-cards?

" The difference in the T cards is the the heavy and cumbersome stones no longer had to be moved around"

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Posted By: Frank Wakefield

Litho = stone... graphy = printing

The older form of lithography involved engraving in stone, that eventually progressed to metal plates, I think.

We need to take a journey with Mr. Peabody and Sherman in the WABAC machine, go back and check out the American Litho printing facilities... ask some questions, scrounge around in the printer's scrap...


And Ted, on that Type I Mantle the knob of the bat in the Yankee hat is in the bottom border of the box, in the Type II Mantle the curvature of the bottom of the knob can be seen, the knob is above that border.

I'm not a believer in the Plank broken plate idea, as you recall. I think the answer is with American Caramel, Philadelphia, loyalty, and the like. Still, someone published that idea, some folks read it and retained it, the printed word does have some power... whether what is printed is correct or not.

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Posted By: Jason Duncan

Ted-


The "e" in Mantle could either have an upward tail on the end or cut off.

Jason