Was it worth it?

[steve B]

The inks used for lithography are oil based, and water is used to keep the ink from sticking to the part of the plate that you don't want to print. So wetting with water won't produce a transfer, at least not on a lithographed item. (New stuff might use vegetable based inks which may be more water soluble- Like most magazines these days) The shop I worked for called them offset transfers which is probably the correct name. They required wet ink, AND a bit of pressure. I leaned on a stack of stuff one day, and wrecked about 200 sheets. Some presses stack the sheets very accurately, so the alignment isn't a big problem unless we know for sure the presses used didn't stack the sheets

Wetting with a solvent however just might do it. I have a couple 1970 topps offset trtansfers that I think were made this way the image is just too strong and is a bit blurry. Kerosene, gasoline, mineral spirits etc. Mineral spirits is used in the printing process, which leaves a few interesting scenarios.

One as already mentioned is a spill onto either a pocketed stack of cards or just the stack of cards. with this, the Cobb ink would be on top of the Piedmont ink

Another couple are possible at the print shop with either a press that stacks or one that doesn't.
A sheet of leftover 150 series is placed face down on the skid used to hold the pile of sheets. This is commonly done to prevent messing up any of the new stuff
Then a fresh sheet of 350 series is placed face down on the skid, probably the fronts are finished, and they're printing the backs.
At some point solvent spills onto the pile of sheets, maybe when only the one sheet is on the skid, maybe not. presure from folowing sheets causes a transfer. Then the sheet of 150's gets cut up and distributed
It's a bit of a stretch, but it is possible. And I've seen stuff like that happen
Remember those sheets I wrecked? we actually ended up using them because of problems later in the process. One of the few times I saw standards allowed to slip.

Anyone have a red Cobb with a Piedmont 150 transfer on the front?

Also possible is that there was a huge rush one day to get some 350 sheets finished, maybe catching up, maybe a big order? So they run the red of the Cobb on one press, and the black on another, then switch stacks and run sheets through that aren't really dry. Not a good practice, the quality that day will be pretty bad.
Again a sheet is placed on a 150 sheet that's used to protect the sheets from the skid and with a little weight you get the two color transfer.

All of these would leave the Cobb ink on top of the Piedmont ink.
And the stack of cards pocketed or otherwise being subjected to solvents is the most likely

If the Cobb ink is under the Piedmont ink.....That gets weird, as it requires the 150's and 350's to be being printed at the same time.

Any way you look at it, the card is very interesting.

Steve B