Revisiting the T206 Wagner "strip"

[parkerj33]

Ted,

I don't understand the printing process, but don't the plates (or something else) determine the "mask" of where the color actually falls on a particular color run? In other words, there is some sort of masking process which causes the red to be printed on the background only portion of kling and brown and a different mask prevents the other 5 colors from also being mixed into that background. Presumably the mask for the bowerman would also have a "hole" so the red bleeds through in the shape of the "B" in the boston uniform. Now, can't it be at least *plausible* that the masks used in preparing this 5 card strip (assuming for a moment its a single strip - not individual cards) were pre-production or in some way not yet setup to print the colors as we know them today? I don't see why thats a technical impossibility. maybe they hadn't yet finalized the masks for each color run at the time they made this strip. heck...they may have just cobbed together 5 plates of players they thought would make a compelling argument to honus - for just this test run. Then in the real press runs (all with proper masks) the plates were actually printed on different sheets with different "neighbors". I am an engineer and we make prototype and "checksample" runs prior to production to uncover anomolies, production inefficiencies, bugs, and provide these as pre-production marketing units to get customers interested, etc, so the concept seems perfectly feasible.

By the way, I am not questioning anyone's knowledge, and I've never seen it in person. Just trying to understand how the knowledge of the printing process makes it implausible that it is a single strip printed together.