Let’s rehash the Bond Bread controversy.

[steve B]

Originally Posted by Johnphotoman

Thank you Steve B - You make very good points. You are right, it is not impossible to make good forgeries. The point I was making is I believe we can rule out the Festburg cards as forgeries, or re-prints from the original plates sometime in the 1970-1980s. Yes you are right a plate can be used over and over, most shops did save their offset plates, but to save one for over 29 years, would be hard. Remember we are talking about Printing from 1947, much different than what we have today. And I cannot say how the cards where actually printed 100%. But the odds are they where printed through offset printing. Thanks John PS. I refer you to KeyMan Collectibles about photo stats.

https://keymancollectibles.com/photo...insonphoto.htm

The process matters.
Offset lithography with the thin aluminum plates - those plates were rarely saved. We piled them up, used them for dustpans, support for bondo on cars, patches for sheds... then when the pile got to be big enough what was left nearly all of them, went to the scrap guy.
How the 1962 Topps plates survived is amazing. I knew the story once but have forgotten.

The other offset - from print blocks or type used very durable "plates" and those would have been saved. Like these, and a couple hockey ones I have


Reprinting from these would be easy.

The way keyman is using photostat is not familiar to me. Photostat was an early term for photocopy from a photocopy machine using the process still used today that uses static electricity to get the toner to stick on the paper.
That's the Xerox process.
Looking it up, the photostat process directly exposed a roll of paper then developed it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photostat_machine

What they describe is a part of the process of creating the original art to photograph. I guess it's possible they could have photocopied the signature onto a transparency, but with a full print shops resources at hand that would have been doing it the hard way.
Photographing the signature to make a film transparency that would become part of the mask would have been easy.

[Johnphotoman]

steve B, Again you make very good points. When I talked about the photostats and printing plates, I was trying not to get too technical. Most shops I managed did save up the aluminum plates and send them to the scrape yard. If any of these did survive , my guess is they would not be very good to print from, the image quality would not be very good, a point I believe you made. But yes, someone could have old BB printing plates. But plates from 1947 could not be used run re-prints from. John

[Johnphotoman]

How photostats were used in printing. It was done in a dark room using negatives making a print on photostat paper. Much like you make a print of a photo from a negative, it is printed or say imaged onto photo paper. In this case the image was imaged onto photostat paper. That photostat would then be use to make a half-tone negative that was used to make the plate.

It was not a photocopy, but made right from the original image. In this way you could add the name right on to the photostat, thereby making a new negative with no loss of details. The photostat which is just a photo print would then be used to make the BB card. Like the photostat in Keyman article on Jackie Robinson. It has his name on it, it is a photo print from a photostat. I hope this helps. Photostats are photo prints imaged on to photo paper. John, PS one reason why it would be hard to find the original negatives that made the plate, is because they to were scrapped for the silver content in the film.