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Old 01-08-2016, 07:50 AM
steve B steve B is offline
Steve Birmingham
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Join Date: Sep 2009
Location: eastern Mass.
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The post factory transfers aren't from simply being damp. I'm not sure exactly how they happened, but I did try to cause one using a soaked card and pressure over a few days. That caused no transfer at all.

There's a number of types of post factory transfers too.

I believe the Ganley was part of the dealer inventory that was in a fire years ago. I have a couple EPDG cards that are scorched the same way but slightly worse and when I wondered about why so many of the ones I saw had the same scorching someone mentioned the fire. So maybe heat plus water plus maybe a chemical extinguisher?

The Bescher I believe is also post- factory. Unless they were using a multi color press, it would be very unusual to get that many colors involved in a wst. Cards like this I suspect the transfer is from years of abrasion caused by a bit of vibration.

The inks used are not water soluble, the carrier would have been either oil based or possibly something like Shellac or linseed oil. We'll probably never know for sure since the ink formulations were trade secrets.

I've shown this before, and while it's not printed by lithography it's a similar thing. A stamp printed on cardstock that left a transfer on another while in the mail. The last printing of these was around 1894, so the transfer came somewhat over 100 years after printing!
Similar cardstock, and similar ink is used in engraving.


What's really interesting about the cylinder transfers is that they show for sure that the press used for that card was a fairly modern press, possibly entirely rotary, and using plates. Some of the flatbed presses which used stones didn't have an impression cylinder and printed directly from the stone.The Willetts cards with the blue nail or wire mark have an impression of the object on the back which is a clear indicator of having been printed on one of those direct presses.

So there's solid proof that two different types of press were used.

Steve B
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