Weird T206 Card - need theories

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Posted By: runscott

This card appears to be a design test - does anyone have any thoughts about it? The borders are also uneven, making me think that maybe it was hand-cut. I thought at first that the background ink had been smeared while wet, but that would have caused the ink to run outside the "red ink area", which didn't occur.

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Posted By: petecld

Design test??? Huh? No.

This will sound silly but I've actually done this: This effect can be achieved by putting somthing heavy on top of a slightly wet sheet and the scratches are caused by the movement of when you pick up whatever you put on it.

I remember it clearly because it ws my first day at a new print shop and I put a box of ink on top of a pile of freshly printed sheets and took quite a bit of grief for it. Everyone loved picking on the new guy - like the one sheet mattered - whatever.

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Posted By: warshawlaw

Marine-speak for rookies; F_____ng New Guy

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Posted By: runscott

There would be smearing outside of the red background area, and there isn't (the ink has to go somewhere).

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Posted By: leon

It could have "gone" on whatever scraped it?

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Posted By: runscott

I really wasn't expecting a response from anyone. Usually the attitude about stuff like this is that the card was doctored or someone altered the bitmap (this is reasonable, given how many bitmaps I have altered . But for some weird reason it is always very difficult for collectors to accept that something new might have popped up...and when the evidence can not be disputed, such as in the case of scrap cards with multiple images, the non-scrap collectors insist that the card is valueless...unless it is in their collection, in which case it becomes a "proof".

As stated in my original post, I already considered the "smeared ink" theory and in fact bought the card assuming that's what had happened, but I dismissed it soon after examining the card under a magnifier. I have seen background patterns similar to this in OBAKs, and they look very nice, so why is it so hard to believe that someone would have experimented a little with the t206's? Actually, it's not hard to believe at all - in fact, it's probable.

The Matty black cap variations are proof of this;however, with the Mattys a distinct move was made to another "shading" technique after a significant number of the first type had already been distributed. In the case of the Mattys, even though I produced hard visual evidence that there were two distinct variations, I was told by several collectors that one variation was simply a case of "light ink". Not true, but also not worth banging my head against a wall over.

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Posted By: runscott

...wow, sounds like intentional human intervention.

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Posted By: Jon C

That picture posted at top of the card with the streaking looked so familiar - but couldn't place my finger on where I had seen something similar before. Well - it all came back to me yesterday!!! IAs some of you guys know, my main area of focus is on the baseball related cigarette packs... I received an email from the T206 Museum on something I've been working on with them. When I was cruising around the site, I remembered reading about the T206 card pulled from a Piedmont pack purchased on ebay! I hadn't read the circumstances surrounding the pack in a while, so i looked up the article to read it again. ( here is the link if you want to read it for yourself http://www.t206museum.com/page/periodical_16.html) Needless to say, when I started looking through the pictures - BAM - there it was! As you can see in the picture - the card has the same similar "cracking/streaking" as the one you have pictured above. Now, since this card was pulled straight from the pack - I would tend to think that these are not "proofs" or ones pulled from a scrap pile. Instead, I tend to agree with those who think they are just due to ink running. (Please note that the ink in the above card stayed within the borders, too) Well, I'm not expert, but that is my opinion! What does everyone else think?

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Posted By: runscott

Thanks - this may indeed have resulted from something similar, but in the card on the image you provided it looks more like scratches, and they DO go across the black borders of the card. In my card, the "smears" go directly up to the borders, bat, player image, but do not cross.

So I still think this is the result of a different process. Also, I did NOT call the Snodgrass a "proof" - it is definitely NOT a proof.

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Posted By: Jon C

Your T206 is unique in that it doesn't go through the bat, etc. Sorry about the proof, too... I believe it was said someone in a post, but in my laziness, I am not going to read through everyones again to see where I got the idea of "proof". I'll call it variation and leave it at that. Like I said - I am far from being an expert...only my opinion. The only thing I can't see is where the scratches go through the border of the card i pictured. Could just be my eyes or computer screen - but I still can't see them. Wish I owned the card so I could get a better scan to look at!!! At any rate, just my opinions - again!

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Posted By: runscott

and I appreciate your input. But the word "proof" does get thrown around a lot, so I just want to make sure I don't get grouped into that class of collector that calls anything with an imperfection a "proof" - I took a virtual beating a couple of years ago for using the word "proof" inappropriately, but that was good because it caused me to do some research which was fun and hopefully resulted in something useful to other collectors. The t206 proofs usually have cross-hatches on each border and are hand-cut.

It's difficult to be positive where the scratches on the Piedmont/pack card cross the black line around the printed image, especially since the scratches and white border area are the same color, but I'm fairly certain they cross in the areas pointed to with the black lines, and probably in other areas as well - you would need a better scan to be certain.

http://www.network54.com/Realm/catchme/Pied01.bmp