Post a Stupid Question - Prewar 101

[steve B]

Originally Posted by egri

My question: every time I read about detecting forged baseball cards, there is always something about how modern printing techniques and equipment are different from back then, and knowing those differences can help spot fakes. But other than money, what prevents a forger from buying a printing press from the 1950s, and inks and cardboard from around then, and cranking out a few sheets of 1952 Topps #311s? It seems to me that the knowledge is out there, the equipment and materials are out there, really the only thing that is missing is someone who can tie the two together.

Certainly the old technology exists, there was very little difference between the stuff I was around in 79-81 and what was done in the 50's (As far as lithography goes other processes will be harder or easier depending on how important the equipment was to the process and final product. typography from maybe 1700's on? pretty easy to get, Rotogravure as done for newspaper supplements in the 30's? Not at all easy)

As has been mentioned already, finding the exact materials would be a real challenge. Although for 52 Mantle or T206 Wagner money I'm sure someone could give it a really good try.

The difficulty is in producing the color separations and halftones EXACTLY like the originals. Many of the better fakes of cards that have circulated since the 80's are fairly easy to detect since the solid areas especially black borders etc are not solid but screened.

I believe that with an original, it might be possible. But would require a lot of knowledge in several different related but different fields. You'd have to know paper very well to get an excellent match. But to get an exact match might require ordering it to those specs from a paper mill that could do it. Then you'd need to get the inks "right", and while it's not difficult to get close, getting it really close might be hard. The plates for each color would be very difficult to reproduce exactly.


To put it in some perspective.
Leaf or their printer couldn't get the colors or the plates for the solid colors the same at all and they were the manufacturer.
In the junk wax era multiple plants were used, and the huge array of varieties is because they all did things slightly differently. 88 Score are screened differently on the same card, either because they made new masks (The negatives the plates are made from) for later print runs, or sent the original art to at least two different plants.


If the manufacturers can't make exact duplicates of their own stuff...........

Steve B