T206 Murr'y: New Back Discovered & What Murr'y Says About T206 Printing

[Jobu]

Thanks JV! I do have the Sov 460 --- and one of the Tolstois.

[mrvster]

great score!

[DJR]

Great info, thx. I bought this from Turner but sold it. Happy Holidays to all

[asoriano]

Originally Posted by DJR

Great info, thx. I bought this from Turner but sold it. Happy Holidays to all

David, you actually purchased the Murr’y Piedmont 350-460 Factory 25 example from me around 2008. Bummed I don’t have a scan of the card!

[CobbSpikedMe]

Hey Bryan,

Great post and thoughts. I think hypothesis 2 makes the most sense too. I find it interesting that there are six different backs that come with this front error. I just never thought a rare error like the Murr'y would've been printed so many times that it would cross over to that many back printings. It didn't dawn on me that they could have been printing multiple backs at the same time on different presses at the same location.

Oh, and congrats on finding the new back and acquiring it as well!

[ullmandds]

Congrats and very interesting bryan!

[Pat R]

Great research Bryan. For the past few years I have been doing research
on a growing group of print/caption flaws and I probably have more
unanswered questions now then I did before I started the research.

In my opinion the reason for a lot of the unanswered questions is
that the way they printed the sheets changed from series to series
and it even changed during the printing of a each series and each
back.

I don't think the printers fixed the Murr'ay I think the numbers are a
result of how they were printed based on my research of the group
of flaws.

One of the things I've found is if a flaw is found on a non piedmont
back so far it's always found at a larger % than the piedmonts. I think there
are a couple of possible reasons for this. They printed smaller sheets
of the non piedmonts and it depended on whether the plate with the flaw
was used for a particular back. The other possibility is that larger sheets
of fronts were printed and divided in half or thirds to print two or three
different backs and only one would have the position with the flaw.

I'll use the Davis AMEP as an example of why I think you have the
numbers you see on the Murr'ay's.

The Davis AMEP is on one of the plate scratch sheets that based on the
scratches I know is at least 12 same vertical subjects high So only one
out of twelve Davis cards printed from this sheet would have the flaw.

Sheet 1B Front.jpg

img392.jpg


These are the numbers I have on that flaw.
Davis.jpg

Since the Piedmont backs were printed first there was probably some
sheets printed before the flaw occurred. The SC649's % is similar
to the Piedmonts but the Sovereign150 and SC150/30 %'s are
double the Piedmonts. All of the other the flaws have similar numbers
and the best explanation I can come up with is the smaller sheets/
less plates on the non Piedmonts.

[Sean]

Bryan, great work. I notice that you have the front of my Old Mill, but not the back. Here's both, in case you need it:


scan0030.jpg

scan0031.jpg

[steve B]

The flaw would most likely have occurred while laying out the stone. For that position, the A just didn't transfer properly.

I doubt it was fixed, the simplest fix would have been scratching in or painting in the rest of the A on the stone, which would usually be obvious.


The scenario for why that many different backs would be a matter of how the orders were placed as well as how the cards were produced.


I think it's most probable that the orders were for a certain number of cards with a particular back. And it's also probable that to some extent, the player selection was part of the order. The bit of packing logbook the specifies something like "for not Philadelphia area" would indicate that there was some regional distribution. It's entirely possible that the brands with fewer sales would be ordered together with a certain selection of players.


The larger brands may have been ordered simply as "X number of Piedmont baseball subjects" (Or something like that. )

The selection for the smaller brands may have been arranged around one of the more mid range brands. And the exact selection simply up to timing.


So yes, there would have been a large stack of fronts somewhere.


The question is what exactly was done.

Usually the required fronts would be brought to the press all together. The presses were a bit slow and may have been manually fed. Even with an automatic feeder chasing around the shop for a fistful of fronts wouldn't be done as it's just too inefficient. So if the order is for say 20,400 cards, then maybe 100 sheets would be brought to the press. (assuming a 12x17 subject sheet ) Those would be run all at once, and sent to cutting/packing after they were dry. (Unless they were shipped uncut to the ATC packing plant.) The number seems low, even for brands with few sales like Lenox or Broadleaf.


Larger brands would probably have larger sheets, that would have been used for … maybe everything down to maybe Old Mill or Polar Bear. Those two brands being in an odd spot, Polar Bear certainly got at least one sheet that was all its own and with some OMs being very tough they may have as well.


Production being what it is, if these were ongoing print jobs, there would have been extra sheets printed. Either in anticipation of a future order, or as backup in case something went very wrong, like printing a big portion of the order in the wrong color, or feeding a couple hundred sheets upside down causing excessive waste.

The question becomes, once it's clear that Lenox won't be needing any more cards, what do you do with the leftover sheets of fronts that are perfectly good? Run them on some other brand, hopefully another of the smaller brands, or maybe you make a Piedmont stone to match the smaller sheet and run them as Piedmonts
(It may have been technically possible to run the smaller sheet with the larger stone, but we'll mostly ignore that for the moment, and there's no actual proof that the sheets were different sizes besides the logic of using much larger sheets for Piedmont and SC where the orders were probably for a million or so if not X number a month until we say stop )

[brass_rat]

Bryan, great work and very nice thread. Thanks to everyone for the thoughtful replies this far.

I hope it doesn't derail the conversation, but I'd like to ask the following question in the context of the printing process discussion (although not specifically about the Murr'y):

Is this scenario possible? (Think of it as hypothesis #4
They keep the name types around and reuse them... And they aren't connected to the team names.

Perhaps the factory worker Murr'y conversation went like this:
One printer says to another:
"Yo Bubba, the Murr'y is messed up. Put in Murray."

Bubba puts in a better name plate but the Murr'y gets tossed to the side.

Later, Bubba just gets careless or lazy and starts using Murr'y again, resulting in other backs receiving newly printed sheets with Murr'y, but printed at a later date.

Evidence? Check out this T215-2 Steinfeldt (and the T215-1 Steinfeldt for reference).

The T215-2 name is in T206/T215-1 font, but the team name is in Type 2 font as the team name changed from St. Louis to Cincinnati. The Type 1 and Type 2 cards are a few years apart.

This is the only T215-2 player that I am aware of that has any Type 1 font, and it's like this on both examples of the Type 2 Steinfeldt that I've seen.

So what happened here? Any relation to how multiple Murr'y backs are found?

Steve

[Pat R]

Originally Posted by steve B

The flaw would most likely have occurred while laying out the stone. For that position, the A just didn't transfer properly.

I doubt it was fixed, the simplest fix would have been scratching in or painting in the rest of the A on the stone, which would usually be obvious.


The scenario for why that many different backs would be a matter of how the orders were placed as well as how the cards were produced.


I think it's most probable that the orders were for a certain number of cards with a particular back. And it's also probable that to some extent, the player selection was part of the order. The bit of packing logbook the specifies something like "for not Philadelphia area" would indicate that there was some regional distribution. It's entirely possible that the brands with fewer sales would be ordered together with a certain selection of players.


The larger brands may have been ordered simply as "X number of Piedmont baseball subjects" (Or something like that. )

The selection for the smaller brands may have been arranged around one of the more mid range brands. And the exact selection simply up to timing.


So yes, there would have been a large stack of fronts somewhere.


The question is what exactly was done.

Usually the required fronts would be brought to the press all together. The presses were a bit slow and may have been manually fed. Even with an automatic feeder chasing around the shop for a fistful of fronts wouldn't be done as it's just too inefficient. So if the order is for say 20,400 cards, then maybe 100 sheets would be brought to the press. (assuming a 12x17 subject sheet ) Those would be run all at once, and sent to cutting/packing after they were dry. (Unless they were shipped uncut to the ATC packing plant.) The number seems low, even for brands with few sales like Lenox or Broadleaf.


Larger brands would probably have larger sheets, that would have been used for … maybe everything down to maybe Old Mill or Polar Bear. Those two brands being in an odd spot, Polar Bear certainly got at least one sheet that was all its own and with some OMs being very tough they may have as well.


Production being what it is, if these were ongoing print jobs, there would have been extra sheets printed. Either in anticipation of a future order, or as backup in case something went very wrong, like printing a big portion of the order in the wrong color, or feeding a couple hundred sheets upside down causing excessive waste.

The question becomes, once it's clear that Lenox won't be needing any more cards, what do you do with the leftover sheets of fronts that are perfectly good? Run them on some other brand, hopefully another of the smaller brands, or maybe you make a Piedmont stone to match the smaller sheet and run them as Piedmonts
(It may have been technically possible to run the smaller sheet with the larger stone, but we'll mostly ignore that for the moment, and there's no actual proof that the sheets were different sizes besides the logic of using much larger sheets for Piedmont and SC where the orders were probably for a million or so if not X number a month until we say stop )

Steve, if this is what happened shouldn't there be more than one confirmed
Piedmont?