Topps 1986 Oddity

[steve B]

Originally Posted by bnorth

I have always been interested in the printing process of cards. When saying the plate was bad on the Clemens & Seaver errors are you talking about the screen not being exposed properly or are you talking the actual aluminum plate because a lot of printers call the screen the plate. Also what makes you think the Clemens & Seaver are from a bad plate.

As far as the cyan under the black that is very common on cards. I have several progressive inked cards that they actually put down the cyan, magenta, and yellow all under the black.

Any printing info would be greatly appreciated.

It could be either.

The original art was photographed through a color filter and/or a screen to make a large negative. I was taught that the screen is the actual filter that produces the halftone (Dots effect) The large negative was taped to an opaque paper making the mask, which was used to expose the coating on the aluminum plate.

That's a bit over simplified for Topps, I'm pretty sure they had multiple parts along the way. For instance for 86 they probably had a set of empty frames with the team name that were photographed but not screened since there's no dot pattern. That way they could make a lot of each team and use them as needed to assemble masks for each sheet.

So anywhere along the line there could be a problem.

The original art could have a peeled spot or uncolored spot
There could be a bit of debris on the art or in the camera.
There could be a bit of debris on the mask, such as a bit of tape or a spill of - I forget the name, but an opaque reddish stuff like whiteout used to block off parts of the mask. There was a special tape too, sort of transparent but dark red used for the same purpose.
Or a bit of debris in the plate making process that prevented an area from being exposed.

The last one is the most common. In a shop looking primarily for production they might use the aluminum plate for a while, especially of the problem wasn't noticed until the plate was mounted in the press. Our shop was slower and more into quality, I can't recall a bad plate being used. Most got caught in platemaking, maybe one borderline one was sent to the pressroom to see if it was good enough.

One time we had a lot of dust in the camera room. (Yes, Room. The camera was around 8ft tall and 10ft long maybe 4ft wide. I think the biggest negative could be around 18x24, possibly 24x36 ) So the negatives had a lot of specks. They moved me into that department for a few days to help paint over all the specks on the masks so they wouldn't print that way. I think I was the only one who wasn't mad about the situation.

Regular scotch tape was used to tape the negatives to the masks. If that got into the image area it would become part of the image. That's very common on 1981 Fleer. Sloppy work.

Steve B