Revisiting the T206 Wagner "strip"

[Matt]

Originally Posted by barrysloate

Hobby veterans often disagree on any number of issues, but this seems to be a very odd one not to have a consensus. Either it's a continuous strip or the cards are pasted on; wouldn't everybody who looked at it closely agree on one or the other? I don't get this one.

This may simply be the result of two different approaches to observation. To oversimplify the issue (it's really a scale), some folks approach things by simply making observations on what they see. Others process what they see with other information they already knew to form their observations.

As an example, Jim may have seen the lines that appear to be printed between the cards and said the lines were printed there. Ted, knowing that for regular T206 printings no lines were printed between cards, may have seen the lines and observed they must be the result of cards being cut and then adhered adjacently.

Again, the above is an example, I can't actually say how either of them processed their encounter with the strip - just using it as an illustration to answer Barry's question.

[Doug]

Since the SGC guys read the board, maybe one of them could chime in on the subject since they are the ones that slabbed it?

[mkdltn]

It may be possible that the strip is indeed "cobbled" together while at the same time being a single continuous strip. This is possible if you understand how these items were printed. The key to this is the lithographic transfer process. I am not going to explain it in this post but will provide a link to a site that I have been working on to explain how chromolithographs were printed in the mid 19th century up until the early to mid 20th century. If you read the making of a cigar label .pdf keep in mind that in lieu of the keyline drawing the halftone photo of the player with the border such as that of Wagner most certainly served as the key instead.

http://mjdalton.blogspot.com/