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Posted By: davidcycleback

It's a best assumption the cards were printed on sheets. There is only one piece of cardboard. The cardboard had a white smooth substance put on the front before printing to make for better printing. The white surface was probably put on by the cardboard maker not the printer. Lithography printing plates were reused for other job after the printing surface was cleaned off-- meaning, it would be unlikely for the plates to exist today. Old baseball printing plates for other types of printing exist, but they are usually for newspaper and magazine pictures, not baseball cards. Theoretically, a printing plate for a 1915 Sporting News or such could still exist. Pre-WWI uncut sheets for baseball cards are rare. I've never seen an uncut sheet of Allen & Ginters, T205s or T204s. That kind of stuff is tough. I beleive there are Obak tobacco uncut sheets. While the T206s sheets may have different is size and shape and player rotation, it's likely the 2 sets were printed similarly. The T206s are lithographs, and you can print lithographs using rotary presses. You can also rotary press on cardboard. However, I'm not sure how early offset lithography with rotary press was used.