A cheap alternative for the T206 Demmitt St. Louis variation

[Runscott]

Steve, I thought 'half-tones' were only used for transferring the photographic image to a black-and-white image that could be used as the basis for the card's art. Given that the rest of it was hand-colored (wasn't it?), and the Coupon card art is generally almost a dead-perfect copy of the T206 art, how could they not have saved art other than the half-tones?

[steve B]

Originally Posted by Runscott

Steve, I thought 'half-tones' were only used for transferring the photographic image to a black-and-white image that could be used as the basis for the card's art. Given that the rest of it was hand-colored (wasn't it?), and the Coupon card art is generally almost a dead-perfect copy of the T206 art, how could they not have saved art other than the half-tones?

Yeah, What I wrote could come across as confusing.

I was focused on the shaded player image rather than the entire multi color image.

Depending on the card they used halftones for at least one color, sometimes more than one. And not necessarily the same colors. Brown and gray/black are usually halftones, light red and blue are sometimes, the other colors are usually not.

So what I should have said is that the color separations would have been saved, probably as photographic negatives.
And that transfers of those might have been saved.

The original art was probably also saved, but there are enough examples of changes across the T206/T213 series that I feel fairly sure they didn't redo the color separtaions each time. Even the most obvious rework, the brown was probably just the same ones with the name and team removed.

It's somewhat odd, there are plenty of reworked T206s, and certainly some reworking between T206 and T213-2. But T213-3 shows lots of different approaches,
Rudolph, where it looks like they just used an old halftone.
others where it looks like they made new ones - Myers, where the underarm shading is yellow which isn't there at all on T206.
And ones like Street fielding where it looks like it's been entirely redone, but they left a shadow of the w on his uniform in blue- a color it wasn't done in T206.
And most look like they were either done from degraded color separations, or redone from 2nd or 3rd generation art.
Or possibly they combined a few and used fewer colors.

I don't have any type 3s to do any real comparisons, but I could compare the few type 2s I have to the T206s.

One thing that makes it hard to figure out is the number of elements.
Original photo -one probably saved
B+W Halftone -one Probably saved
Original art -Anywhere from one to 9 probably saved
halftones/negatives - 6-9 per card probably saved
Master stone 6-9 per card, maybe some saved? if they were with saved stuff yes, if not the stone would have been resurfaced.
Transfers 6-9 per card some probably saved. But only leftover extras.
production stones/plates. 6-9 per sheet probably not saved

So 21-30 different elements, with potentially just as many for some proofs, and occasional additional ones for the reworked subjects. (And another 5 or so for each back) And that's just from one job at a very large and busy printshop.

The place I was at saved original art when the customer didn't want it back, and the negative masks for I think 3 years or more. Except for when silver went crazy in 81 and many of the negatives were sent to a silver recycler.


Steve B

[Runscott]

Super post, Steve - thanks!