1971 Topps Blue Border Steve Garvey?

[Mark70Z]

Originally Posted by steve B

Topps......Appears to have done just about every sort of proofing possible.

Depending on how you look at it, even a card that's a production piece can be a "proof" of sorts.
Steve B

Steve,

I know you have knowledge in the printing industry so what would the Steve Garvey, Glenn Beckert and Brooks Robinson cards pictured be called in the printing industry that have a finished back and just part of the colors that go into a finished card on the front?

[steve B]

Originally Posted by Mark70Z

Steve,

I know you have knowledge in the printing industry so what would the Steve Garvey, Glenn Beckert and Brooks Robinson cards pictured be called in the printing industry that have a finished back and just part of the colors that go into a finished card on the front?

There's not really much for technical terms that can easily be applied without seeing the entire sheet.

They're all unfinished product, the Beckert less finished than the others.

The most likely thing is that they're from make ready sheets, excess sheets used for press adjustment. And for some reason they didn't get used for the black layer - Or for Beckert only the blue layer.
Those sheets might have been sheets spoiled somehow during the printing of the backs. So part of the whole sheet might have had poor inking of either back color, or some other problem.

Other possibilities - They're missing colors because of some mishap in the printing. Maybe two sheets fed at the same time, maybe a prior sheet came apart and a peeled off section blocked the color (Almost impossible for the Beckert) Maybe a piece of foreign matter another piece of paper, or something got into the press and blocked the black. Maybe the sheet misfed and got jammed.
All would lead to some or all of the sheet missing at least one color.

That stuff would usually get used as makeready sheets for whatever was next on that same stock. (The 79s with 78 backs were found either in sheets or strips at a landfill if I recall the story right, as sheets they were probably make ready sheets. )


Of course, at the print shop I was at only the sheets on the press were make ready sheets the others were called by a rather general technical term "trash"

If we'd printed any cards, I'd have some cool stuff, as I'd have made off with as much of that as I could carry. We had to pay to have it hauled away, so I'm sure the boss would have been ok with it. My card box dividers for a few years were cut from the discarded margins of some cardstock cover -maybe a college catalog?

Steve B

[Mark70Z]

Originally Posted by steve B

There's not really much for technical terms that can easily be applied without seeing the entire sheet.

They're all unfinished product, the Beckert less finished than the others.

Of course, at the print shop I was at only the sheets on the press were make ready sheets the others were called by a rather general technical term "trash" Steve B

Steve,

Thanks so much for the response. You add great insight when it comes to the printing process, which I know very little about.

Just one more question to help with my understanding. The "progression proofs" that Eric72 posted of the '76 Wayne Stephenson would be different than the Brooks Robinson's that were posted, is that correct? Those are typically how I see proofs, w/the normal colors used, black, yellow, blue, yellow and blue, etc. and are typically blank backed.

[JollyElm]

Completely OT, but who knew Dick Van Dyke played for the Flyers???

[steve B]

Originally Posted by Mark70Z

Steve,

Thanks so much for the response. You add great insight when it comes to the printing process, which I know very little about.

Just one more question to help with my understanding. The "progression proofs" that Eric72 posted of the '76 Wayne Stephenson would be different than the Brooks Robinson's that were posted, is that correct? Those are typically how I see proofs, w/the normal colors used, black, yellow, blue, yellow and blue, etc. and are typically blank backed.

If the Brooks Robinsons have backs, they probably aren't progressive proofs.

Progressive proofs are used to check that each color layer prints properly, and that the colors are lined up correctly so the registration will be good over the entire sheet. (In Topps case....ummm....sort of...their registration wasn't always great. )
The stuff that should get caught at this stage is things like a player with the team banner the wrong color or wrong name. Or worse stuff like having one card out of place on one color so for instance Ed Jones always gets the blue layer from Dave Jones card.

That sort of thing has been missed fairly recently, one year Black Diamond had a whole bunch of wrong backs because the sheet layout for the front didn't match the layout for the back.
The few 91 Topps that have the pink background from a manager on a players card and the opposite are either mistakes that slipped past proofing, or partial wrong backs where the correct fronts got the wrong pink back layer but the correct Blue info/stats layer.

As you can see from the test sheet piece I showed Topps had a LOT of potential adjustment. The brief time I ran a press the farthest I had to move an entire plate was maybe 1-2mm. Getting the tension uneven on the plate would throw the registration off by a bit so it had to be adjusted evenly. They eliminated a lot of adjusting and proofing by making the plates so they would naturally line up almost exactly. But we were a high quality fairly short run sort of place. Topps printers were mostly trying to get a few million cards out the door as quickly and cheaply as possible.

Steve B

[Eric72]

Originally Posted by Mark70Z

Steve,

Thanks so much for the response. You add great insight when it comes to the printing process, which I know very little about.

Just one more question to help with my understanding. The "progression proofs" that Eric72 posted of the '76 Wayne Stephenson would be different than the Brooks Robinson's that were posted, is that correct? Those are typically how I see proofs, w/the normal colors used, black, yellow, blue, yellow and blue, etc. and are typically blank backed.

I believe Topps used the same CMYK process for the Robinsons and the Stephensons: 4-color printing:

Cyan (fancy name for a shade of blue)
Magenta (fancy name for a shade of red)
Yellow
Black

Additionally, I believe they used a process known as, "half-tone printing."

Long story short, the cards given pre-press treatment should basically exhibit the same characteristics.

Just my two cents. Steve, please weigh in here, as you are the resident expert.

[steve B]

Topps does use CMYK, although there are some years where it really looks like there are some other colors as well. Usually in the solid areas like team banners etc.

In theory, yes the progressive proofs should be the identical layers to the issued cards. For the 70's and before that's more likely. From the mid 80's on, I believe they used multiple printing plants, possibly producing different products. So maybe Rack packs from one, wax from another.

Any problems found at that stage in proofing that got corrected may show up as two different progressive proofs.

Even if the plants are the same, there can be small differences between runs, or between cards on different parts of a sheet. That's more likely in the era before 132 card series. And also possible for 132 card series before 1974-5 when they combined all the series.

I know for sure that 88 Score were screened differently for different press runs. In other words, every card from the set comes with at least two different versions most of which can only be told apart with a magnifier. (And three different sorts of cutting, I haven't checked for differences within each sort of cutting, but the most common comes two ways for sure.)

Steve B

[steve B]

Halftones are simply the picture being done with dots. The original art is photographed through a "screen" that breaks the image up into the dots. A black and white newspaper photo is the simplest halftone to find. Nearly all modern cards are printed that way. (maybe all, but there's always that one that was done differently) Even back to 1909-10 there's a lot of halftones used.

Generally to make sure the colors mix properly, each color is done at a different angle. (For Straight CMYK, T206 uses some solid colors some halftones and lots of colors. Printing of that era can often be mixed styles)

One of the tells of many fakes is that while Topps prints some stuff like borders and team/name banners in solid colors most fakers take the halftone from an original card and print those areas as halftones.

Steve B

[bnorth]

Originally Posted by steve B

Topps does use CMYK, although there are some years where it really looks like there are some other colors as well. Usually in the solid areas like team banners etc.

In theory, yes the progressive proofs should be the identical layers to the issued cards. For the 70's and before that's more likely. From the mid 80's on, I believe they used multiple printing plants, possibly producing different products. So maybe Rack packs from one, wax from another.

Any problems found at that stage in proofing that got corrected may show up as two different progressive proofs.

Even if the plants are the same, there can be small differences between runs, or between cards on different parts of a sheet. That's more likely in the era before 132 card series. And also possible for 132 card series before 1974-5 when they combined all the series.

I know for sure that 88 Score were screened differently for different press runs. In other words, every card from the set comes with at least two different versions most of which can only be told apart with a magnifier. (And three different sorts of cutting, I haven't checked for differences within each sort of cutting, but the most common comes two ways for sure.)

Steve B

Score had a plant in the little town I live in back in 88. Not sure how long it was open but know it was not for very long. Their main plant was 50 miles away and they just tried the plant here for a short time. Had many friends and relatives that worked here/there.

Unlike the other companies of the time Score took quality very serious. There are tons of error, wrong back, and blank front/back cards from the other guys. Just try and find Score errors, they are very rare. Almost every wrong back or blank back/front cards that originally hit the market came from Walt or myself.