1971 Topps Blue Border Steve Garvey?

[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.