Ink Colors used in T206

[sirraffles]

Yes, on the T206 series you are correct about the dot pattern. Most of it was not done by hand stippling but through a halftone. I could be wrong but I've looked at a fair number of the T206 cards magnified and it seems that some of the portraits had the halftone enhanced with some hand stippling. The backgrounds often seem to have some stippling too, especially in the skies. Would you agree?

If there was hand stippling plus halftones...I don't think that there were very many things printed like that. It is like a snapshot in time.

[steve B]

Originally Posted by sirraffles

Yes, on the T206 series you are correct about the dot pattern. Most of it was not done by hand stippling but through a halftone. I could be wrong but I've looked at a fair number of the T206 cards magnified and it seems that some of the portraits had the halftone enhanced with some hand stippling. The backgrounds often seem to have some stippling too, especially in the skies. Would you agree?

If there was hand stippling plus halftones...I don't think that there were very many things printed like that. It is like a snapshot in time.

Some of the backgrounds are a combination of screened and solid colors. Probably to get the color just right.

And some of the brown halftone areas do look enhanced, often with an outline to strengthen the contrast between colors like a dark uniform and a dark background. Like on Absteins shoulder at the right of the card. That one isn't stippled, so it was probably drawn onto the original art as a solid line.

Enhancing the screened pattern manually would be possible, but lots of work for a production shop. But there are still lots of aspects to how ALC worked that are hard to be sure of.

I know a guy who repaired a damaged halftone for the shop he worked for, a 300dpi image that had been cut in half by mistake with the original no longer available. He said it took about 3 days to line up and splice the two pieces and fill gaps.
I spent a nice couple days fixing plate masks that had been photographed when the camera room was dusty. They'd have redone the whole thing, but time was short and the cost would have taken too much out of the profit. I was much cheaper

Steve B

[t206hound]

I wanted to get the general consensus that "buff" (or similar) was part of the printing process. That seems to be extremely likely (if not confirmed). My rationale for asking is that I picked up the following card that I believed had missing red ink. A "buff" color does appear where the red would be in a few cases. I wanted to make sure it wasn't faded/chemical red. I believe this to be a legit missing red ink card of Gilbert, and a few board members concur.

In the scans, notice that the one with red ink does, in fact, have an under layer of buff for the "S" in St. Louis. Also look at the full scan where there is absolutely no red or buff in the belt. BTW, there's also a nice slight ghost on this card to boot.

[steve B]

Buff is probably what I was calling gray/tan. I wasn't sure if it was a part of the brown at the time. Some cards I have the brown is more grayish.

But the ones I'm seeing here and looking at more of mine make me think buff is its own color.

And buff sounds a bit nicer than tan.

Steve B

[mrvster]

Nice Score ERICK!

At first i was skeptical until you sent to hi res!

Eagle EYe Erick....c the PRO!!

Thank God your on my side

[bijoem]

Chris -

that ALC proof you have is absolutely outstanding..... and I think says a lot about how the cards might have been printed.

very cool.

[t206hound]

Well, I've tried twice to get this card slabbed with SGC. I understand that the the TPGs are a little leery of slabbing things like this. There's that whole liability thing. But to me this is a no brainer. I'll take this card to them again at the National and if I don't have success, try at PSA.

Any thoughts from those in the know? I've provided scans of my SGC 40 Gilbert and of the presumed missing red ink Gilbert below: