What is the origin of Frank Thomas NNOF?

[saucywombat]

Originally Posted by West

I'm still confused by the digression into gravure printing. I agree that the cause of the error was an improperly exposed/damaged plate. As we have mentioned in the past, that is the only way the NNOF was reproduced 500-1000X and all copies are virtually identical. However, the Topps employee I spoke to told me they used offset lithography printing - ie a printing plate created from a mask of negatives (I'm following Steve's theory here that an obstruction - tape, etc- in the platemaking process prevented the black plate from being properly exposed). In gravure a cylinder is engraved with cells which carry ink - seems a lot different than offset lithography. Also, it says gravure prints hexagons, while offset lithography gives the dot design - an example of which can be found on the very distinct 1990 Topps colored borders.

Well I'd say the point of the post is not to demonstrate that a gravure method was used vs. offset lithography and that the references to gravure, by means of internet ready information, were the clearest way to demonstrate the idea of how printing made the leap from etched images to being able to accurately reproduce photographic images on a plate. I would trust your assertion regarding the use of offset lithography.

With either offset lithography or gravure (in 1990) a chemical process is required to transfer the image from the negative into a metal plate. Full stop.

My point being this is my opinion on where the error originates. It was a chemical issue that relates to the image being engraved on the plate. How the ink and/or image is then impressed or transferred to cardboard stock is not an issue.

This would correlate with the visual we have from the totality of the error area. It resembles nothing. It is an irregular fluid area, almost like you poured water on a pane of glass.

I do not understand the desire to relate all this to a piece of tape or cardboard obstruction, which the error area in no way resembles.

Perhaps it's a better narrative that more people could relate to that a careless or incompetent worker carelessly or foolishly wasn't paying attention to a piece of tape or cardboard, rather than a very esoteric discussion of offset lithography methodology and common mass production issues.

[West]

Originally Posted by saucywombat

Well I'd say the point of the post is not to demonstrate that a gravure method was used vs. offset lithography and that the references to gravure, by means of internet ready information, were the clearest way to demonstrate the idea of how printing made the leap from etched images to being able to accurately reproduce photographic images on a plate. I would trust your assertion regarding the use of offset lithography.

With either offset lithography or gravure (in 1990) a chemical process is required to transfer the image from the negative into a metal plate. Full stop.

My point being this is my opinion on where the error originates. It was a chemical issue that relates to the image being engraved on the plate. How the ink and/or image is then impressed or transferred to cardboard stock is not an issue.

This would correlate with the visual we have from the totality of the error area. It resembles nothing. It is an irregular fluid area, almost like you poured water on a pane of glass.

I do not understand the desire to relate all this to a piece of tape or cardboard obstruction, which the error area in no way resembles.

Perhaps it's a better narrative that more people could relate to that a careless or incompetent worker carelessly or foolishly wasn't paying attention to a piece of tape or cardboard, rather than a very esoteric discussion of offset lithography methodology and common mass production issues.

Thank you for explaining! That makes a ton more sense. I believe your first hypothesis seems likely - "Undeveloped patches are a known problem in developing photographic prints, which would be loosely defined as an area of the negative that has been unaffected by processing solutions. This may have gone unnoticed and the image transferred to the plate."

The fact that the blackless area does resemble a fluid substance seems to point towards some kind of chemical resist with the negative as you mentioned. Considering the existence of the smaller partial blackless errors also found in the general wherabouts of NNOF packs, do you think the "chemical resist" hypothesis is still likely? I always wondered what sequence of events could produce both types of errors, and what this tells us about the causation.

We have the NNOF press run, with 14 affected cards. Two blue plate scratches run vertically down the uncut sheet, one goes down column 4, and is visible on the Nolan Ryan, Kenny Rogers, Zeile, Steve Olin, Ventura and Canale. The other goes down column 5 and can be seen on Steve Searcy, Bob Knepper, Tapani, and Assenmacher.
Another press run has small blackless areas and fainter blue plate scratches. You can only see the blue line on the Tapani and the Nolan Ryan. The blackless areas are small and located on the Biggio and Thomas (pictured below), Tapani, Morris and Lawton.
A third press run is similar but has even smaller blackless area on the Lawton.
A fourth press run has blackless areas that can only be seen on a high resolution scanner. I have examples from all four press runs if you would like to see scans.