Some of the mysteries and myths surrounding the most famous card in the hobby.

[steve B]

Originally Posted by G1911

I don’t know printing, but I have never found evidence on the cards themselves for this or in the documentary material that we have uncovered. Not all backs were monotone, most were but not all (T68 Natural Leaf springs to mind immediately). I would expect that, if a sheet had the backs printed and was then shipped to another facility and had the fronts printed there at a different time, that this would result in more back/front centering mismatch than we actually see. Perhaps this assumption is faulty. It would also add expense, I would think, doubling your transportation at least. Fullgraff’s available pages from his ledger seems to indicate full cards at Brett, nothing specified that they are only doing half the work when the tables are accounting volumes printed.

Is there anything we have in support of a geographic and significant time gap between the back and front printings? Looking at our printer experts here.

To me, and I have no idea how many others even partly agree, leftover sheets would have been used either as press adjustment sheets, or to fill orders when a few cards were needed after the group they were originally intended for was shipped. The best evidence of this is the 150 only card that now has a single P350.

From every indication, fronts were printed, then backs. For Piedmont and SC, that back printing would have been almost continuous. For the brands using far fewer cards it may have been whatever was the current group of fronts at the time the order came in.
It's possible small brands or groups of small brands got their own sheets, but that's still something that's wide open for study.

Those T220 sheet fragments and the added Fullgraff info, is the first indication I've seen that any of the work was farmed out to other print shops. And it opens up a whole range of possibilities.