Show...me...your print variations!

[G1911]

Originally Posted by Sliphorn

You are spot on as I did a cloud of my two and see a goldish dot that replaced the blue one. It is likely an attempt to get rid of the blue one.

I just noticed on your blown up images that there is a second smaller spot of blue, on both your copies, by his armpit area. I will have to pull mine and look at others to see if this is consistent on all cards.

Seems odd they would not just cover up the spot with white ink, instead of the yellowish greenish goldish color. Can't really think of another good explanation for it than what you propose.

[steve B]

Originally Posted by G1911

I just noticed on your blown up images that there is a second smaller spot of blue, on both your copies, by his armpit area. I will have to pull mine and look at others to see if this is consistent on all cards.

Seems odd they would not just cover up the spot with white ink, instead of the yellowish greenish goldish color. Can't really think of another good explanation for it than what you propose.

Because the process doesn't use white ink.

If the defect is on both the blue plate and the yellow plate, that means it's from somewhere in the process of making the plates. And one that ended up on the mask for both colors.

If you redo the image to fix the blue mask, but not the yellow, the blue dot will go away, but you'll still have the yellow one. Which they may or may not have corrected since it's not as obvious, and the color separations were relatively expensive at the time.

[G1911]

Originally Posted by steve B

Because the process doesn't use white ink.

If the defect is on both the blue plate and the yellow plate, that means it's from somewhere in the process of making the plates. And one that ended up on the mask for both colors.

If you redo the image to fix the blue mask, but not the yellow, the blue dot will go away, but you'll still have the yellow one. Which they may or may not have corrected since it's not as obvious, and the color separations were relatively expensive at the time.

I don’t know squat about printing so perhaps I phrased it wrong or used incorrect terminology. If they were able to make white in every card in the set, why could they not have simply made this spot white instead of the yellowish color to correct the error? Making an area of the card white does not seem to be difficult, as they were able to do it in every card in the set.

[G1911]

Following up to #1929 with John's Nobis cards, looks like it comes in a second variation where only the white in his name is impacted, and the club name is correct.

I've found a roughly even number of both versions of the misprint.

[steve B]

Those Nobis cards are some of the more interesting printing problems I've seen.

[ALR-bishop]

Some recent pick ups based on prior posts by others

[whiteymet]

Hi Gang:

Just picked up a big group of 60 Topps proofs/variations. Here are a few

Issued cards to the left.

Photo 1 note the color background on the small inset photo to the left

Second photo top three cards note the the photo on the inset photo extends over the border, the last card, Gonzalez note the blue bottom border extends over logo

[steve B]

Originally Posted by G1911

I don’t know squat about printing so perhaps I phrased it wrong or used incorrect terminology. If they were able to make white in every card in the set, why could they not have simply made this spot white instead of the yellowish color to correct the error? Making an area of the card white does not seem to be difficult, as they were able to do it in every card in the set.

Typically white is made by just not printing an area like the borders.

The way the printed areas are made in a brief step by step

Original art/photos created
Color separations done, photographing the original through a filter to produce blue, magenta, yellow and black halftones. (On some cards, there are non- halftone areas like borders.)
Those generate large negatives known as the mask.
That is used to expose the plate which gets developed.

On the press, the plate gets wet, then inked with oil based ink.
That transfers to the "mat" which is a rubber roller (sort of)
Then transfers to the paper.

Yellow is usually printed first, followed by ... I forget if blue or magenta is next, then finally black (And glosscoat if you're making it at all glossy.)

There may be days between colors on a really big job unless a multi color press is used or multiple presses.

If there's a big colored spot, the two fixes are either making a new mask without the spot.
Or stoning off the spot on one of the darker colors, if you notice it early enough.

Color separations cost a LOT at the time, I wasn't involved in the pricing, but I think the place I worked got a couple hundred even on a small job in 1980-81

Stoning off the spot in the blue plate would give a yellowish spot since yellow would already be there. And you'd probably have to do it for red too if it was there.
A spot caused by debris could be on all 4 colors, or just on one.