Portraits and action poses grouped together on T206 sheets?

[Jantz]

Portraits and action poses grouped together on T206 sheets?

I believe it depends on the particular sheet.

[steve B]

I can't really think of a solid technical reason to group them or to not group them. A few ideas come to mind, but nothing solid enough to really get behind as it would depend on things I doubt we'll ever know.

The following is all pure conjecture.

Like how were the cards packed, both leaving ALC and going into the packs. Some cutting sequences would lead to having stacks of the same card, others would lead to a more random distribution. Which of those they wanted would maybe determine the plate layout. Was there any attempt at getting a decent distribution in a carton, or would a carton purchase get you 10 of the same pose?

Or it could be as simple as whoever made the art and masters preferring working on Portraits or more of an action shot. Action might have been done by more experienced workers as they sometimes added the entire background. Or it might have hinged on what was ready when they went to lay out the plates.

I try not to ponder these things too much, the solvable stuff is complicated enough!

Steve B

[greco827]

Pat,

The work and effort you are putting into this is incredible!

At the end of the day, there are probably dozens of sheet configuration variations. The scratch sheets you are putting together certainly seem to show at least a couple such configurations, while miscut cards with other players names on top suggest a different configuration. I'd imagine it's as simple as ... So and so got traded, pull him off, an throw another Cobb on the sheet.

I think where your work has the largest potential benefit is knowing who was printed together, at least at some point in time, where that point of time may be, and the size of the sheets .... which also may have varied. For example, are all of the scratches in PD150, also on PD350's? If so, this may suggest a late PD150 run/early PD350 run. If not, perhaps an earlier PD150 run. Do any of those same cards have scratches in EPDG or SC150 runs?

Its very interesting, but I think people looking for a singular answer are not going to find one.

[steve B]

The "plates" were actually limestone stones, some size x about 4 inches thick. Typically after use they were resurfaced and laid out for some other print job.

I've seen a handful of cards showing a bit of possible carry over between P150 and 350. Those show what I think are remnants of the deeper areas of scratching.
There's a lot of room to study aspects that haven't been looked at. Pat has also made a bunch of progress with other marks that are consistent, and may or may not appear on more than one back. I'd thought that the sheets for different brands would be different, but I think he's proven that isn't always the case, and other than grouping subjects by common features I haven't yet seen much solid proof that different brands had different sheet layouts.

A couple of the areas that could bear a bit of looking into.
Early vs later P150 sheets.
The Magie has some issues with the back on a few positions, which aren't simple damage, because the consistently match small differences on the fronts. (Yes completists, there's at least 6-8 different Magies. ) I haven't seen those faults on the back of any other P150's. Finding them would probably prove to be interesting.

P150 vs P350
Some of the P150 scratches may have been deep enough to still just barely show on P350. If that's what the marks are, the question becomes whether the plate was resurfaced and totally redone with new transfers, and it's just by chance the same one was used Or if only a small portion was redone at first, for instance they removed the 1 and replaced it with a 3 or replaced 350 with 150. That would require checking the position of the numbers relative to the rest of the back to see if any have a slight difference.

Separating the probably three different runs of 150's and 350's. Some cards show some indication that the masters were reworked at least once during each of the 150 and 350 series. It really needs a ton of work, identifying which subjects, and what reworking was done. That would take a lot of detailed scans.
I just finished doing a first draft of something similar for the 49 Leaf, and just hunting up passable scans of obvious differences on a 49 card set took a few days.

Steve B

[toppcat]

Originally Posted by steve B

I can't really think of a solid technical reason to group them or to not group them. A few ideas come to mind, but nothing solid enough to really get behind as it would depend on things I doubt we'll ever know.

The following is all pure conjecture.

Like how were the cards packed, both leaving ALC and going into the packs. Some cutting sequences would lead to having stacks of the same card, others would lead to a more random distribution. Which of those they wanted would maybe determine the plate layout. Was there any attempt at getting a decent distribution in a carton, or would a carton purchase get you 10 of the same pose?

Or it could be as simple as whoever made the art and masters preferring working on Portraits or more of an action shot. Action might have been done by more experienced workers as they sometimes added the entire background. Or it might have hinged on what was ready when they went to lay out the plates.

I try not to ponder these things too much, the solvable stuff is complicated enough!

Steve B

It seems to me color could have played a role as well. You can see clear color patterns on the reconstructed sheets. It's especially noticeable with the way yellow backgrounds weave in and out of the columns. Blue too.