[Archive]

Posted By: davidcycleback

What I can tell you is that a printing plate from back then would have a raised surface like yours, and printing plates from back then commonly had a heavy wood backing. The unusual thing is one would normally expect everything to be backwards. Perhaps it was some type of display item, as you this type of raised letters plaque in old buildings and historical sites.

As the question may come up later, lithography plates (letterpress isn't lithograhy) can have text both backwards and forwards, as there was an often used transfer process that allowed you to have text foreword on the plate. So, if you find a Topps printing plate with text and pictures forward and readable, there isn't anything amiss with that. If you find a lithography printing plate with the text backwards, there's nothing amiss about that either. They could do it both ways, as the there was a printing technique in lithography that allowed them to reverse the text before the ink reached the paper or cardboard.