Yet Another T206 Sheet Size Discussion

[steve B]

ALC did have presses with a 19" track. Specifically Hoe company number 5 presses. BUT and this is an important thing. ALC was a huge printing concern, the info about the presses comes from a diagram of one floor of the plant in an article about their conversion to electricity to run the machines.(Or use of electricity in the plant when it was new- I don't recall which it was. ) That was in Scientific American back then.

Most huge printing companies will have a variety of presses. The only places I've seen with only one size press have been either very small like someone running one of the little 10" presses in their garage. Or a place that only prints one fairly consistent item, like a newspaper or book publisher.


One of the things I find fascinating is that compelling arguments can be made for Both multiples of 12 and multiples of 17.

I will also say that I've seen the breakdown Chris did of the 460 series, and being at the time more in the 12 camp than the 17 I tried to use pop report numbers to break his groups. With the exception of maybe 4 cards that looked like they belonged in a different group my attempt at proving those groups wrong failed. And the very few that could have moved groups came in pairs - If one had too many graded copies for it's group it matched another group very well, AND that other group had a card that matched the other group. Neither of the swaps broke the overall pattern by requiring an unconfirmed combination.

Since then I've become convinced that both 12 and 17 are correct for particular portions of some series.

Some quick math based on a couple decent guesses and using Scot Readers estimates of how many might have been printed also leads me to believe that at least for the very common backs more than one press was used at a time. The numbers indicate a need for almost constant printing of Piedmont for sure. Say 100 million P350s? At 17x6 - 102 per sheet, that's 980392 sheets. Times 9 impressions/sheet is 8823529 impressions. At 800/hour = 11,029 hours. (And that doesn't count setup time and pre production, and cutting/packing) A 50 hour workweek is only 2600 hours a year. Three shifts with no downtime? 459 days Use of a two color press would cut the time in half. Using multiple presses would make it manageable.
Another option would be a far larger sheet, perhaps made up of 4 smaller sheets. Many US stamps were printed this way. Press sheet =4 10x10 panes that were then cut apart before perforating.

Steve B

[tedzan]

Originally Posted by steve B

ALC did have presses with a 19" track. Specifically Hoe company number 5 presses. BUT and this is an important thing. ALC was a huge printing concern, the info about the presses comes from a diagram of one floor of the plant in an article about their conversion to electricity to run the machines.(Or use of electricity in the plant when it was new- I don't recall which it was. ) That was in Scientific American back then.
Steve B

Yes, we know that American Litho (ALC) had varying sizes of printing presses. Big ones, medium size ones, and smaller size presses. However, it is my understanding that ALC
realized, with their 6-7 color process used to print these tobacco cards, they were able to achieve a higher YIELD of quality by printing them on smaller sheets. And, YIELD was
a very important factor when you are cranking out 10's of Millions of cards in a short time span.

Steve, do you agree with the above premise ?


And, while it's a mystery to me that we haven't discovered any uncut sheets (or partially uncut panels) of T206's, I've seen several uncut sheets of various Non-Sports issues
produced by ALC. One (or two) were printed on a 19" x 24" sheet; and, others were printed on smaller size sheets.



TED Z

[steve B]

Originally Posted by tedzan

Yes, we know that American Litho (ALC) had varying sizes of printing presses. Big ones, medium size ones, and smaller size presses. However, it is my understanding that ALC
realized, with their 6-7 color process used to print these tobacco cards, they were able to achieve a higher YIELD of quality by printing them on smaller sheets. And, YIELD was
a very important factor when you are cranking out 10's of Millions of cards in a short time span.

Steve, do you agree with the above premise ?


And, while it's a mystery to me that we haven't discovered any uncut sheets (or partially uncut panels) of T206's, I've seen several uncut sheets of various Non-Sports issues
produced by ALC. One (or two) were printed on a 19" x 24" sheet; and, others were printed on smaller size sheets.



TED Z

Not quite. They would get higher yield from larger sheets. The press can only make so many impressions an hour back then typically 800-1000 for a sheet fed press.
The web presses could run much faster, but I haven't found any indication that they were for lithography. The aluminum plates came out around 1900, so it's certainly possible.

Balancing quality, speed, and costs from setup time etc is the challenge. Quality is mostly up to the operator, but running faster makes it much harder.

One thing all of us neglect is the possibility of very large sheets laid out in blocks that could be based on 12 or 17 subjects. Or multiple sheet arrangements - So printing both sheets that were 17 (Maybe more) Subjects AND at the same time printing sheets that were 12 subjects.

I haven't seen the uncut non-sports cards, different sizes makes sense since many of those sets were 50-100 cards. If you have any links to them I think they'd be very interesting.

It is odd that no uncut production baseball cards are known, when there are sheets or partial sheets of other stuff. Odder still is that the progressive proof books for cigar box labels are readily available, but I've never seen one for any card. That's probably a matter of what got saved.

Steve B

[tedzan]

Double post.

[tedzan]

Originally Posted by steve B

Balancing quality, speed, and costs from setup time etc is the challenge. Quality is mostly up to the operator, but running faster makes it much harder.

I haven't seen the uncut non-sports cards, different sizes makes sense since many of those sets were 50-100 cards. If you have any links to them I think they'd be very interesting.

Steve B

To your last question......it has been quite a while since I've seen these non-sports sheets. I will search for pictures of them.

The following simulated 96-card sheet of known 48 subjects from the 350 series ** is my concept of a typical ALC press run
employing a 19" press to print these cards on a 19" x 24" sheet of cardboard.








Note **
These 48 - Major League subjects are a known quantity from the 1910 COUPON issue. Their arrangement is arbitrary, but I firmly
believe these 48 were printed together on the same sheet. I show them Double-Printed in order to completely fill-out the sheet.

If these 96 cards do not display on your screen as a 12 x 9 arrangement, diminish the display to obtain the desired configuration.


TED Z
.

[t206hound]

Originally Posted by tedzan

To your last question......it has been quite a while since I've seen these non-sports sheets. I will search for pictures of them.

The following simulated 96-card sheet of known 48 subjects from the 350 series ** is my concept of a typical ALC press run
employing a 19" press to print these cards on a 19" x 24" sheet of cardboard.


Note **
These 48 - Major League subjects are a known quantity from the 1910 COUPON issue. Their arrangement is arbitrary, but I firmly
believe these 48 were printed together on the same sheet. I show them Double-Printed in order to completely fill-out the sheet.

If these 96 cards do not display on your screen as a 12 x 9 arrangement, diminish the display to obtain the desired configuration.


TED Z
.

The following are confirmed sheetmates; bolded items are contrary to your image above.

On (at least one instance of) a Sweet Caporal 350 Factory 30 sheet:

• Thomas and Rossman were stacked vertically

On (at least one instance of) a Piedmont 350 sheet:

• McBride and Rossman were stacked vertically
• Stephens and Rossman were aligned horizontally
• Stephens and Hoblitzell were stacked vertically
• Jackson and Danny Hoffman were stacked vertically
• Matty McIntyre and Danny Hoffman were stacked vertically
• McElveen and Dygert were stacked vertically
• Hartsel and Wilson were aligned horizontally

[t206hound]

Assuming that sheet layouts did not change during the piedmont 350 run (which may be totally invalid statement), you could have had this (number of rows is insignificant... alignment is what's being demonstrated):

[tedzan]

I arranged this 48 subject sheet some years ago before any top/bottom data was reported. And as I stated......

Note **
These 48 - Major League subjects are a known quantity from the 1910 COUPON issue. Their arrangement is arbitrary, but I firmly
believe these 48 were printed together on the same sheet. I show them Double-Printed in order to completely fill-out the sheet.

If these 96 cards do not display on your screen as a 12 x 9 arrangement, diminish the display to obtain the desired configuration.



So, I don't understand your comments......as, the following 9 subjects are on this sheet......

Thomas and Rossman

McBride and Rossman

Matty McIntyre and Danny Hoffman

Hartsel and Wilson

AND, I'll will add the red Cobb adjacent to Chance (yellow portrait)....as I have personally seen this combo.


These subjects were printed on a different sheet (we are aware that ALC would switch around various subjects during press runs).

McElveen and Dygert
Stephens and Rossman
Stephens and Hoblitzell
Jackson and Danny Hoffman



TED Z
.

[teetwoohsix]

Originally Posted by steve B

Not quite. They would get higher yield from larger sheets. The press can only make so many impressions an hour back then typically 800-1000 for a sheet fed press.

Steve B

Now, this is very interesting ^^^^ and I'm also glad the Obak sheet is being talked about.

I think it is very important to be open minded about the sheet layout and not get pigeon holed into focusing on a "certain sized" track, when we already know they were using multiple sized presses. The Obak sheet shows us that the print quality on this larger sheet was not sacrificed by using a larger sheet. And, for now, that Obak sheet is the closest thing we have to study.

Great discussion! I love threads like this.

Jantz- great observation!

Chris- Great input with the yellow-brown scraps, I think those are an excellent clue.

Erick- great questions, you are better with words than I am.

Steve- always fun to read your information, thanks!

Everyone else- thanks for the input! I didn't start this thread but I've thoroughly enjoyed reading through it.


Sincerely, Clayton