Piedmont 150 plate scratch(es) progress II
 

Finally made the puzzle out of the ones seen so far. Made a bunch of paper P150 backs, and drew the known scratches in by hand. That gives me something concrete to work with.

It's looking promising.

A bunch of pairs or blocks, nothing huge but decent so far.

Enough to now know the damaged plate was used for at least 3 different sheets.

This is almost certain.
There are scratches for some 150 only subjects, as well as many from those printed with some 350 backs.

There are also pairs with the same scratch, indicating that they were not on the same sheet.

Those pair are
Walsh /Ames hands at chest
Powell / Goode
Durham /Crawford
Durham /Oldring

That last pair leads me to believe that at least 4 sheets were involved.

Here's the blocks so far, in no particular order.
Note that Durham might be interchanged with Crawford, but I don't yet have a scan of crawford with that particular scratch.
I also have a horizontal strip of 3 I'm looking at, but I'm not positive enough yet to tape them together.

Steve B
http://www.mindspring.com/~sblackstone/jan015.jpg

Wow! Interesting
 

I honestly didn't think this was going to lead anywhere... but I'm digging what you've got so far. I'm impressed!

Great work Steve,

I haven't found any new scratches (other than the Doyle-throwing that I posted originally), but I've been looking. This looks like a sheet might be taking shape!! :)

another thing
 

And another thing, if this placement is correct, then we have at least three rows of each player on a sheet...

Again, I'm very impressed (and glad I provided a few scans)...

I have a covaleski P150 with a printer line on the back.. do you want to see a scan ? This can help you in your research?

Excellent work so far! Please keep checking your P150 backs everyone :D

Yes, any mark can help.

Steve B

http://i10.servimg.com/u/f10/11/52/54/64/t206_l10.jpg
http://i10.servimg.com/u/f10/11/52/54/64/t206_l11.jpg

Another interesting thing is that many of the lines only extend to the edge of the design and not into the edge of the card. That seems like they made some attempts at fixing whatever happened. I have scans of a couple cards that look as if a scratch might have been almost completely erased.

Small bits of plate damage can be fixed with a special crayon that fills in the damage. It also can scuff off the ink holding areas to repair mistakes in a small area.

Steve B

Thanks Nelson, that's a new player. I'll have to check if it's a new scratch.

That's 43 different subjects now.

Steve B

Great work Steve! I keep an eye out on ebay for any I haven't seen here before. Hope others do too

I do not want to derail this great thread,but I've been cataloguing the Magie error, definitely some distinguishable features from the different front and back plates.

These three all have a blue fleck on the left border and lower left as well as the green background is shifted slightly down on the fronts.

http://i.imgur.com/4j4k3pz.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/yAo71Ka.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/WWcmqYd.jpg

Wow, nice work Steve !! Very impressive.

Good eye on those Magie cards Chris.

Sincerely, clayton

I don't see the scratch. Can one of you explain it to me?

The scan above may not show it on some monitors.

This one should be a bit clearer. One of the Cobb bat on cards.
http://www.mindspring.com/~sblackstone/cobbonbk.jpg


The plates have a surface that retains water and the image is put on with a medium that repels water but would hold oil. When the surface gets scratched the scratch can hold some ink and will usually print.

You can actually make a lithograph using a piece of paper,crayon, a roller and some oily ink. Not a good or detailed lithograph, but something.

Steve B

Steve,

I have a Keeler with bat that I will dig out this weekend. A P 150 with a decent scratch on it. Great work on this project.

Best,

Andy

Chris, good eye I pointed this out to a friend not long ago you will also notice the bleed into the design on the back, as well as the bleed into the "o" and "0"'s in the text in the factory line section on the bottom.

I've owned 2 Magies one had this the other did not, I have seen a few others as well with the back like the above.

John

Steve

Interesting thread!

I'll keep the scans coming if you want me to. Heres a few more.

Durham & Lake NY


Jantz

The Seymour and Criss pairing is pretty amazing.

I have to say that I find this MUCH more persuasive than theories of sheets. It is almost like the scratched plate is the T206 Rosetta Stone!

I will forever now be obsessed with finding P150s with scratched on them. If only I had paid more attention when I built my Momster a few years ago. The SGC 10 Magie above was once mine, and I never even bothered to look at the back much. Was too focused on the "i" :)

Great work! Please keep it up!

Have there been any known plates to exist that have survived?

Thanks Jantz,

I have both of those, but those are better scans. Keep em coming, even duplicates are good.

Front scans would also be a bit of help. The next step is comparing fronts to see if they're always the same for each back. Different ones would show the same subject being in the same spot on more than one sheet. That's obviously a much bigger project.

Steve B

Not a derailment at all.

The plate would have printed cards before getting scratched, and consistent marks like those would carry over to the scratched plate. If they don't we'll know there was more than one P150 back plate. If they do, it's another bit of info.

I was looking at Magie since it has just the one back and is uncommon enough that it's almost certain to have only been on one sheet.

A nice find would be a Magee with the same back as those three.

Steve B

Not for T206. If there were any survivors we'd have fewer discussions about sheet size. And probably more about exact sheet layouts.

The plates were most likely the stone versions, which normally got resurfaced and reused as soon as the job was done or they became too worn.


Steve B

Similar to this Steve?

http://i.imgur.com/qrWqnoQ.jpg

Here are a couple of scans that I think help support Steves theory that
Cobb and Durham were next to each other on a sheet. Two different scans
of Cobb and durham that seem to line up and a Durham that might fit in
under the one next to Cobb.

Durham
 

Had a moment so looked for Durham P150s. Found one with a different scratch on ebay: http://www.ebay.com/itm/300855689268

<img src="http://i.ebayimg.com/t/1909-T206-Bull-Durham-Piedmont-150-back-Graded-VERY-GOOD-PLUS-/00/s/Nzg0WDQzNg==/z/jJUAAOxyY7FRDKDn/$T2eC16V,!zUE9s38+!uRBRDKDmhw(w~~60_3.JPG" width="20%" />

Yes, very similar. That one was probably used to make the transfers to lay out the plates for the stuff on it. It's amazing it survived at all. There are a few available on Ebay with non-card content.

Steve B

That Durham with the long vertical scratch does look like it belongs under the one on the block I had. And the scan blown up a bit shows it angling farther left at the very bottom, which puts it right where the ones shown above start. For some reaon I hadn't drawn the vertical one even though I had a scan.

Pat sent me a message about his efforts and I'm really impressed. He's been working on the same thing, and has found a lot more scans of different marks. I'm happy this is becoming a nice collective effort. I'm guessing if I was doing it alone it might take years if not decades to get really solid results.

Off to tape up the Durham bits:D

Steve B

This is really neat...
 

I have nothing to add but my appreciation for the effort you and others are putting in to this...thinking we need some kind of Nobel Prize for these kinds of things!!! Great work...Matt

Thanks Pat! That seems to really fit. I can't wait to see more scans. This is getting exciting. The way that one hooks left right at the bottom makes it match the one Jantz and t206hound have shown.

That one also appears on Oldring. So it might be Oldring next to Cobb. But I'll go with Durham for now.

Steve B

Here are the scans of Doyle again, but they don't seem to line up with any of the cards in the pattern so far. The scratch seems to be going in the wrong direction...

Steve I don't know if you have this one but it has marks going in three
different directions. It is Stone (I have the card if you need a front scan)

Nice Pat, another Stone with a scratch that aligns above.
http://i.imgur.com/NJXikOC.jpg

Thanks Chris here is the other Stone that goes with it.

Ha, I meant to post the above one, these seem to come together quite nicely.

Not a great scan but here is a Kleinow with bat pairing.

http://i.imgur.com/weXYYYa.jpg

The way the scratches present at the top of this thread's array, it looks like some type of tool or instrument may have been dropped onto a "plate", something that was like a tic tac toe square.

The third card down on the far left of this scan is a Donohue.

http://t206.monkberry.com/webpics/t206-4rev.jpg

One more pair Nicholls.

That's some great stuff! The Stone with 3 different angles explains why so few of the ones I have with the mark up to the right match up.


I've been trying to figure out what happened. One thought is that the scratch was deliberate maybe to mark the stone for resurfacing. I think that's unlikely now.

The other thought was that there was a bit of stone or other debris when another was slid on top of it in storage. Schulte has a scratch that seems the sort of zig zag you'd get from that.

Steve B

Neat. I didn't have a scan that nice of that one.

What card is one up and one to the right? It's a 350, but it's got a couple identifiable marks.

Steve B

Possible connection? Camnitz (Link)

Not sure the Ball lines up with Crawford as the card needs to come down a bit.

http://i.imgur.com/iSveVyS.jpg

Chris, this is the one I had next to ball, see if this one lines up better.

Bobby Wallace Portrait
 

Sorry about the scan quality, guys - I have a terrible scanner.

Bobby Wallace Portrait - mark runs right through the border, up through Y and T in quality, and then below "of" and stops at the o. Additional small mark just on the border south of the t in Piedmont (hard to see in this scan).

Maybe it's time for a new scanner unless someone knows a trick to make my HP work better!

It's highly likely that, as Steve mentioned, several players will have the same back damage showing, it may not be these specific players on a sheet.

http://i.imgur.com/IJrBFHu.jpg

It's a Dineen.

That's really cool. Looks like stuff is coming together.

I don't think the block with Cobb belongs there. The upper Cobb has a left-right line crossing just at the top. so far up a card cut with a small upper border won't show it.

The two left right scratches seem to have very different angles. The upper Cobb is the shallower of the two. I'm thinking it belongs lower and at least two rows to the right of the other block.

Steve B

Very nice work on this. I checked my cards and found two with lines on the back.

http://www.moviecard.com/aapics/t206...rt-pied150.jpg

http://www.moviecard.com/aapics/t206-ganley-wash.jpg

continued good luck
 

Don't know if you have this Niles (no longer mine):
[IMG]http://photos.imageevent.com/imoverh.../t206Niles.jpg[/IMG]

Here is one...
 

Not sure if I have more, but this is the one I remembered having.

Good luck, Steve!

Best,

ag

On ebay right now

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1909-11-T206...721c43b&_uhb=1

Found a few more
 

I remembered I had won an H&S lot with a lot of P150, most of which I sold. Here are a few scans... I think these are new lines. The graded card is a Bobby Wallace:

Interesting

Different Durham cards and the scratch is in a different spot.


Jantz

nevermind
 

already posted my walsh before...

Hey Jantz, hope all is well.

These cards as you know we're stacked 2+ per player and each had their own back plate up/down the column. A scratch on the lower Durham should be different then a scratch on the top one. Every sheet printed with Durham using the damaged plate should show the same scratches in the same spot. Until they ran a second print with a repaired plate.

If we can catalogue each unique front per identifiable back plate we can know those players were located in the same spot on the sheet. This indicates a unique sheet layout with that player in that location and could give us potential # of sheets used to run the series.

If there were 5 players with the same scratch then its plausible 5 sheets were used to print the 150 cards. 150/5 would indicate 30 unique cards per sheet.

Fun stuff.

There are actually five different Durhams.

Just saw the Shipke in this auction(in the pictures)

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1909-11-T206...fb6aff9&_uhb=1

Just saw this Donohue too...may be more, stay tuned

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1909-11-T206...91fff53&_uhb=1

Kleinow

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1909-11-T206...91fff37&_uhb=1

I am very impressed by the thought that went into this. What made you get the idea in the first place?

Again, why hasn't anyone contacted Alan Ray (the only person I know of who may have actually seen an uncut sheet)?

This plate scratch idea is 100% Steve's. From a few discussions we have had I realized that having an identifiable back marking linking a unique card to a specific position on a sheet could provide enough information to determine how many sheets were used to print the series.

If there is an identifiable marking on a back plate and confirmed on multiple examples of whomever is on the front, let's say Bates. We can then look for the exact marking on other cards. If multiple examples of Elberfeld has this same marking, then we can assume that the Bates and Elberfeld are in the same position on a sheet, but are not sheet mates.

If we can do this for several back markings, cataloguing every P150 card with that identifiable marking, a common denominator should show up. This # is highly likely how many sheets were used to run the series. Unless half way through the series they fixed the plates then we are out of luck.

With the number of sheets used in a 150 card series, we can get the number of unique players per sheet....that is if they didnt mess with the configuration and kept to the two rows consistent.

Then we can put together the back markings, two namer and side by side cards and maybe this will be enough to start to place a sheet together.

It is a lot of work to get there.

Not mine
 

found at a online shop: Kleinow NY Batting:
http://www.hofcards.com/catalog/254G.jpg

My Niles has the same marking on the back.

Hi Alex-

I've often wondered the same thing after reading "The Card",,,in the very back of the book, it states that Mr.Ray didn't return numerous calls during the research phase of the book. I guess he did admit to them that the Wagner wasn't cut by a machine & that he tried to tell people but no one would listen.

It would be nice for him to tell the whole story about whether or not it was cut from a sheet or a strip, and if it was a sheet, who was on it and how was it configured. Ray did say he was going to write a book about it all, but I am not aware of such a book yet.

Sincerely, Clayton

Looking for your opinion on this Steve. Two different seymours with the
same Criss. I tried to line up the top marks as close as I could.
The first one the bottom mark on Criss is lower and the 2nd one
is higher but the tops line up on both fairly close.

Regular scan of 2nd seymour.

I think they both fit just fine. There will be a bit of misalingnment because of centering, And a bit of distortion in the scans themselves. I think one of the pair appears slightly taller in the scan than the other.

I'm hoping to get back to you and a couple other people this weekend. I haven't had much free time this week. By the way, I finally found a use for the security inserts from modern packs. I give them to my daughter when she demands cards. They're even better than late 80's commons since she can draw her own. :)

Steve B

Ray is not the only person to see a sheet or partial-Bill Mastro and the late Bob Sevchuk did as well. Doesn't matter I guess as neither one is talking.

I have found many of matching marks with different players on the
front which could be because they were in the same placement
on another sheet. I think we should also consider the possibilty that some
were on the same sheet in another area. Many of the marks are on
the same angle and when you extend that angle you come up with
some very similar marks.

Chase white cap
 

There was a Chase white cap that sold on eBay tonight with a plate scratch on the back:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-1911...-/261167773206

I may have missed it, but I looked back through the thread and didn't see any other scratches in the same location as the Chase.

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-y...s702/Chase.JPG

Covaleski

Brown (cubs)

Hahn

Great work, Steve.

T206Schaefer
 

Attachment 88563

Attachment 88564

Picked this card up from a board member today (thanx, Larry), thought it may be a fit for this research.

Sorry if pics don't load, terrible at this sort of thing. Let me know if there is anything I can do to make this easier to work with.

keith