1960 Topps Error -Charley Ane

[nearmint]

Great info, Steve B, thank you. I'm looking forward to seeing your guide. I have a lot of 1960 Fleer football cards, and many of them have printing problems of various sorts. It will be interesting to match them up with yours.

Edited to add: thanks to Steve L for starting this!

[CowboysGuide]

Steve B;

Thanks for your insight into the vintage card printing process.

So, by what you have stated, this explains the red blob on the card, but what about the missing yellow text in the football shaped graphic. There doesn't seem to be yellow missing on the entire card, just this area.

[steve B]

The printers use a group of colors,usually just the 3 primary colors plus black. Sometimes they'll use more.
Typically you want to print the lighter colors first so the later dark colors will cover them. That also makes the layout easier.

For instance on the card shown thy could simply print a yellow football then print the red over it and not worry much about registration. In reality they usually only print larger yellow letters to save on ink since the registration on the picture matters.

So the colors printed would be in order - Yellow, Red(magenta), Blue(cyan), Black.

When the red smeared it covered the areas that should have been blank to let the yellow show through.

Steve B