Seeking Opinions on Commercial Printing Techniques from the Late 1940's - For Research

[spacemonkey1]

Hello- I was pointed to this forum by several people that I had reached out to while doing research on a printed product from the late 1940's. I am hoping to get some skilled eyes on the prints to 1. validate that a change was made at the production level and 2. that the kind of change that I think was made, would have been done in commercial printed products. The product is a set of baseball cards distributed by the Leaf Company out of Chicago in 1948/49. There are variations that are present that the "Card Industry" chalks up do "Printer Errors", but I actually think there was a second printing, and physical changes were made to the plates to try and make the cards more colorful and appealing after a lackluster reception with the first run. Any help would be appreciated. I have attached a quick PDF that outlines my theory.

 

[SteveSuffRIT]

YES. The types of changes you noted are NOT from normal variations in the first printing.
They must be from a completely different printing with different plates.
In the 1940's the predominate printing method was letterpress, using relief metal plates.

 

[spacemonkey1]

Thanks Steve! In that process, is there commonly registration issues as well?

 

[gordo]

The only printing "error" that I can see is the misregistration - but that wouldn't be unusual for cheap bubble gum cards. All the other differences point to either a second print run with changes made, or counterfeit cards (assuming they have special value).

 

[spacemonkey1]

The only printing "error" that I can see is the misregistration - but that wouldn't be unusual for cheap bubble gum cards. All the other differences point to either a second print run with changes made, or counterfeit cards (assuming they have special value).

Registration issues were rampant in this series, more than any other really. It is common for the plates to be totally misaligned or backs to be flipped and have the wrong player on them. There are 98 cards in the set, I have an image of an uncut sheet, 7x7 yielding 49 cards. There was the first printing, a second printing that is "short print", and I think the 3rd printing (First printing 2.0). The set was marketed to have 168 cards, but they were skip numbered keep people buying packs trying to fill the holes in their sets. All in all, there are only 98 cards needed to complete the set.

If they were changing plates to bring out the colors in the hats and sleeves, is it also fair to say that they detail of the "bars" from the background extending to the nameplate could be achieved as well. I figured the hat details were masked off, but adding elements would take setting up a new plate all together, or is there a simpler way to achieve that? Thank you for chiming in, this is all SUPER helpful.

 

[KAM465]

Looks like they may have "Colorized" a Black & White photograph for he image