Pre War Baseball card Printing Plate found

[olsport]

Here are the 1934 R310 Butterfinger of Paul Waner with the Paul Waner Printing plate image next to it. They are the same pic with the same right & left strips cut off, and the same autographs, but the printing plate has a capitol block lettered name below the signature "PAUL WANER" Plus the vast size differences, as the printing plate card is only 1 5/8" x 7/8"


Somebody please solve the mystery of what card set this printing plate printed????

[fkw]

Interesting.

I dont know of any cards that match the printing plate.

[steve B]

The screen (dot pattern) is really coarse, more like a newspaper picture.
Any chance they're from a newspaper or magazine ad for the premiums?

Steve

[olsport]

Those pictures are so rough because I am giving you a microscopic view of very small cards, so you can see them in detail. They are on copper bright as new pennies so I have to angle them in the light just right to be able to see properly. They are NOT rough in any way. On the contrary ,they are very high quality. If I printed some cards with them, you would see how finely detailled they are. They have far greater detail actually than rough exhibit type cards or newspaper plates with huge dots. I am trying to get ONE question answered. "Which card set from the mid 1930s are they from??" Which set from the mid 30s used those pics with those autographs and those CAPITOL lettered names below them in that small size? Newspaper printing plates are like the example in this thread with the wood block attached, for them to move them around anywhere on the page, not a curved plate.

[D. Broughman]

Paul have you looked on Old Cardboard they show most of the old card sets and you can compare them with your plates. Click on Old Cardboard at the top of this page to get there. There are some of your poses on different sets but I didn't see a set with all the poses or size of yours. I was wondering if they could be a stamp set of some kind because of the small size. D.

[erstevens]

Maybe the plate was used to produce some promotional materials for the Butterfinger set.

[PolarBear]

Those can't be printing plates in the sense that they were used to make the final image on paper/cardboard, because the image would be backward.

I know next to nothing about printing but maybe they were used in some sort of intermediate stage in the printing process.

The only analogy I can think of is the coining process. A master hub is made (reverse image), which creates working hubs (actual image), which are used to create working dies (reverse image), which create coins (actual image).

Maybe someone with printing knowledge can explain what they are.

[ScottFandango]

looks like the size of four-on-one Exhibits which started in 1929....

meaning 4 of the imgaes would make up one card....

(although mainly portraits were used)

maybe the cards they made never made it to the candy store...

[nebboy]

Because of the curve to the plate this looks very much like a gravure printing black printing plate. They use that kind of printing for large runs. It bee around a long time. The line screen should be pretty detailed about 133 to 150 line screen. If it were for a news-paper the number of dots per inch (line screen) should be 115. You can use your 10X loop and just count them. Its not that hard. That should give you a much better Idea of what kind of substraight (paper) it was used to print on. And will narrow your search. Hope that helps

[lhardem]

Interesting thread.

The printer's block below was used--probably in a Wheaties' newspaper ad in 1935--to promote the Wheaties brand and the baseball cards found on the backs of their cereal boxes at the time. That was their first year to print athletes on their cereal boxes.

The example card used on the block is that of Jack Armstrong. As we know, Armstrong was a fictitious all-American athlete used in a number of the company's promotions during the period.



The three images are a) The printer's block when viewed directly, b) the block mirrored (to match the imprint that it makes, and c) a scan of the Jack Armstrong card from the back of a 1935 Wheaties box.

Lyman