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Originally Posted by jacksoncoupage
I figured as much. I’d assume the same for UD (especially regarding their early years).
The production info is just one part of the picture here. Finding some info from a Topps source regarding the changes made to the card is the second, most important part and it is hard to imagine any reason why anyone with knowledge about it would have to worry about breaching any NDA. It seems doubtful that whatever the reason for the changes, they’d be protected trade secrets.
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Just out of curiousity, is there a reason we can't discuss the card in question? I'm quite interested in the general subject as it is, but actually know very little about 1989 Topps errors and misprints.
As for the non disclosure agreements, I have mostly had the same experiences as Dave (Toppcat). Despite numerous attempts I was only able to speak to one former employee.
There are signs that the veil of secrecy is lifting with time. Phil Carter was "Director of Sports" in 1987 for Topps and just last week went on the record for ESPN in the story about Don Mattingly's birthday. However, I've found that the guys who are most visible are often in some kind of PR or upper management position that would have interaction with the press. Topps' employee records were very confidential at the time and I've never had any luck tracking down anyone who had anything to do with pre-production. For example, John Tassoni Jr of Topps printing subcontractor Quebecor was interviewed by SCD last year but he was just a floor worker in 1990.
https://www.sportscollectorsdaily.co...hn-tassoni-jr/
If you're looking for someone who would have been involved in pre-production (plate making, correcting errors, etc), that would have likely been a different department. Depending on the card itself and the nature of the error, you're probably not even looking for a Topps employee. You would likely be wanting to talk to a pre-production worker from 1988-early '89 at Federated Lithographers-Printers (which became Quebecor in Nov. 1989 when they bought it). Let's take a look at the two articles detailing pre-production and see if we can figure out what the process was (and hopefully Steve B can actually answer this question at some point)
When you look at Tassoni's interview, he was at one point quoted as saying that in the early 90's, “The film was sent to us,” Tassoni said. “All we had to do was strip it in.” This implies that while photography, artwork, graphics and design were likely done in house at Topps, once it was all completed and ready to be shot and negatives created to make printing plates, that would be shipped off to the subcontractors at Federated Lithograph Printers/Quebecor to have final negatives created and then used to create the printing plates. This would seem to make sense to me. Since the plates would degrade frequently over the time it takes to produce millions of sheets of sportscards, it would be worthwhile to have platemaking done at the printing facility to decrease turnaround time when new plates are needed. Or when an error is discovered that needs correction. So if you are looking for information on how an error was corrected in the middle of a 10 million sheet press production, my best guess is you would be looking to talk to someone at Federated Lithograph Printers.
It is possible that I have this all wrong and they did all their platemaking and print corrections in Duryea. If you look at the second article I have that goes behind the scenes at Topps, they make it sound as if all printing and pre-production was done right in Duryea at the Topps plant. But the employee I spoke to about the accuracy of this article implied that this was a bit of PR spin. It sounds way better in print to imply that all the work is done in house at Topps rather than to clumsily explain that they've subbed out printing to a Canadian owned company operating in Rhode Island. Here is the article below to compare:
