[steve B]

There are standard paper sizes. US standard and international standard are a bit different.

ALC certainly bought paper from a paper company. I can't recall ever hearing of a place that did their own.

Track width is important, but here's where I'll waffle a bit.

Most presses can print on narrower paper.
I'm pretty sure we could have run 8 1/2x 11 on the 35 inch Heidelbergs. But that would have required some dire circumstance. Generally you want to keep close to full size. I know for sure we ran some undersize stuff. Maybe 24x17?

I'm also fairly sure ALC would have had a variety of press sizes. Running a couple thousand business cards on a press with a 19" track would be very wasteful.
The press is chosen based on the job, both the image size of the entire item- like a sheet, AND the quantity needed.

So if you wanted say 100 posters that were 30x20 they would have to be made on the 35 inch press.
If you wanted the same 100 but only 20x20 it would be on the 24 inch press.

Now, reduce the size to 15x12? It can't go on the little press, so it's got to be on one of the bigger ones. If it's only 100 the question becomes wether it's more expensive to make 100 passes through the 24 inch press OR fit two on a sheet and run it through 50 times.
As the quantity goes up, the press used will change.

Small items like T206 would be a challenge. But there's usually a formula that accounts for the costs. Speed would have mattered too. If time was short they may have run smaller sheets to have something to deliver quickly. They could have laid out the plates faster doing only a few subjects as the art and masters were finished.

Later, if there was more lead time and a larger order a bigger sheet may have made more sense.

Going by groups and how many are in a group will only get partway there. Obviously a sheet of 34 subjects doesn't make any sense with groups of cards like the ones that only come with a 150 back.

As Ted has pointed out there are a lot of groupings that are divisible by 6.
(Although even exactly which the 150 onlys are gets confusing, as it's debatable which ones count. )

But there are also groups that don't fit easily with a sheet of subjects divisible by 6.

There's even a card or two where the available backs would lead me to think they may have been partly done on a special sheet with just the one card.
Powers is the only one that only has 150 series backs but also has a factory 649 back.
So it's its own special puzzle.
Done on a special sheet for the 649 series?
On a 649 series sheet natuarally as part of a complex layout involving small sheets with some players short printed and others on multiple sheets?
On a big sheet that got the 649 op but not any of the 350 backs?
All of those are possible.
In fact, all of those could be how it was actually done! I wouldn't think it likely since it's a somewhat tough card, but it's possible.

Another is Magie vs Magee. Magie only has one back. At one point I thought it may have been just one out of however many magie/magees were on a sheet. So I found as many scans as I could find. Pretty quickly I realized that couldn't be the case. There are at least 4 readily identifiable Magies. And the individual fronts always have the same flaws on the back.

I think the sheet layouts varied between the different series, and maybe by league and brand.

I really have to post about some of what I'm looking at and what I've found. Some fascinating stuff, and that's only from a little bit of looking.

What I'm aiming at is some solid proof of certain ideas. If the cards lead towards proving my theories wrong that's ok, that's how science works. (And science it is figuring even a bit of this out)

Steve B

Steve B