I don't recall who I have from 62. There was a plate or plates found In I think the early 90's that was cut into individual cards. If you count the colors as different, then there would only be 1-3 of each. (I don't recall the 62 series size offhand.)
There would typically be four for the card front, Black, cyan (blue) Magenta. and yellow. Some cards may have had more, like some of the late 70's with some colors printed as solid areas.
My 62 is a magenta plate.
The backs would usually be two plates until they went to full color backs. So for instance 1971 would have a green back plate and a black back plate.
The process from roughly the early 90's and earlier involved making a "mask" Basically a very large composite negative, Then using that to expose the plate which was developed much like a photograph. At least one late for each color, maybe more depending on how many cards were being printed. By the early 90's all the companies were using multiple printers and each place would make its own plates - probably from copies of the original color separations.
The modern process also uses plates, but the newest stuff makes the plates directly on the press digitally. I'm not familiar enough with it to know if the system makes individual plates, or if the plate is redoable somehow. I would think both types exist, Places like Zazzle can print one copy of something cheaply and the stuff I've had done looks actually printed instead of done by a computer printer. (I could be wrong about that)
I was looking on Ebay for the ones I saw that weren't actual production plates and couldn't find them. They had the text saying they were a printing plate right in the image. The ones I looked at all seemed real, or at least likely to be real.
Steve B
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