I'm positive that it's both.
Of course a card closing on 90 years old can have some fading, or some reduced brightness from wear and dirt etc from the air.
Even into the early 1980's, colors were mixed by hand by the press operator. A specific color like the Goudey reds and blues like on the Combs (a really great looking card) would have been mixed from the base magenta and cyan by adding specific amounts of other colors. And the "recipies" for each color often weren't precise. Like making a light green would start with cyan, adding yellow, And the major colors were listed in ounces. But then maybe some "drops" of black. Well, the drops where I worked were usually a dime sized glob. Different press operators might make theirs a different size. And different inks might be more or less runny so the drop would be flatter.
If the printer used inks from different sources, they could be more or less vibrant, even used directly like the Yellow probably was.
Combine that with batches that might have more or less colorant, or be more or less opaque... different inking levels etc.
One of the challenges was getting something you print in August to look exactly like the same job printed in May. We had a couple customers who required special colors for their company logo. And the place generally tried to have the same pressman do all of their jobs to get the consistency they wanted.
A big shop doing big runs of stuff for a candy company wouldn't have the same demands or much interest in being that picky about color.
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