Fro Joy Babe Ruth Cards

[steve B]

The plate or print block could be for any combination of cards or sheets that would fit the press. And the presses come in a variety of sizes. So they could have run the sheets as single sheets, or as multiple sheets on one big piece of paper then cut them apart. It would depend on how many sheets they wanted, and what equipment the printer had.

Current lithography plates can make over a million impressions under the right conditions. Older systems didn't do as well.

As far as why there aren't more, they just didn't print as many. And the people doing the reprinting probably only did one batch.

Places using systems that use print blocks or steel plates will usually save them if they aren't worn out. Offset lithography plates are usually aluminum and get recycled. Old fashioned lithography stones were thick and expensive, and were usually etched flat to be reused.

The sheets as a premium could have been done by a different process than the regular cards since only a few would have been needed, maybe 2-5000? . The layout of the premium sheet wouldn't have been used for the regular cards. There's just too much paper that would be cut off and wasted.

The microscopic image from post 27 looks like it was done by a printing block. You can see impressions of the raised square parts that printed the dots, and the ink that squeezed out around the edges of them. The other image there looks too even to have been done with the same sort of block.

the fakes almost certainly wouldn't have been done with a block because of the expense, but I'd guess that the print run was also around 5000. Later ones like the color ones could have been printed in higher numbers. If they didn't sell for much, a collection of the various fakes couldbe interesting.

Steve B