1949 Leaf Theory

[yanks87]

Originally Posted by steve_a

Great work as always Pat, your patience is amazing. A question for you or maybe better for SteveB. If a complete sheet has four panels & four Jensens, how are those panels created? ie; would we expect a variation in one panel or a change in the entire sheet as a print run goes on. And a similar question, if the hat variations are blue registration issues, how consistent would we expect those to be? That is, are registration issues gradual in nature or stepped? Jensens ear on the right below shows a separated red & blue layer for instance and caught my eye. Just curious on the nuts & bolts of actual print process.

This one leans into the research that I have been doing on the process and the printing of the cards themselves. Throw the Jensen on the list of the variations, one that I had never really picked up. Registration issues would be consistent across a a printing run, but would depend on the kind of press that they used (Single color or 4 color lithography). I spoke in depth about the printing process with my Great Uncle (just turned 99, still sharp as a tack). We covered all aspects of his opinions on this set, he worked at a commercial printing company in NYC in the 40's after the war. He said that elements could be taken out of the images on press, so if there was some element that didn't look right, it could be scrubbed from the plate. That said, the plate and the stock never came into direct contact, so in theory, if something was off registration, it would be carried across all the prints in that run. To my eye, it looks like plate variations more than registration issues. The WHY is the big question I am wrestling with now. Why change the blue plate, why remove the details on the hats on tother players, why change the sleeves on the Aberson's. Odd stuff, but fun to check out.

One thing that my Uncle also said, there was no adding elements to the plate, unless you etched a new plate. He said the only time that you would change a plate would be when a plate would wear down, or if they we moved to a different factory, different printer. So this makes cards like Aberson, Ruth, Rizzuto, and Robinson and potentially Jensen interesting variations. I do think the PINK versions were late in the game, and from the conversations I had with my Great Uncle, he thinks that the pink may have more about the ink that was available or what was cheapest to buy at the time.

I have a running theory that the cards were printed at the factory in Chicago where the candy packaging was printed. The stock looks similar to the packaging of WHOPPERS that was produced by Overland Confectionary, a brand that was consolidated and under the Leaf Brands family name in 1947. I have seen images of that stock, and it looks similar. My Uncle did say whoever printed these, were "Not the guys you would want to print a copy of a Van Gogh." I asked him what would lead to this many errors and variations, he laughed and said "they may have been drunk." Which caught me off guard! He said "these guys printing would be the equivalent of "bringing the space shuttle to be serviced at the corner mechanic."