[jjt111]

I’m an uneducated (high school and 12 credits from community college) layman who has worked in a manufacturing plant the last 31 years. But I have some printing and blanking press machine experience to share. First they seem to be confused about printing plates and press plates. Printing plates will be the mirror image of the card and press plates will be the normal image. I feel most think they are the same thing but press plates would go behind the printing plate.. But they seem to use both terms for the press plate. Most have only one press plate. There is little reason to have more except for resale I guess. Normally because of the color mix they end up black.

Must cards are run through a four color printing machine and sheets are 27” X 40”. They are then run through a blanking press that has 5/16” to a ½” of lead trim and 1/8” to 1/4” of inside and perimeter waste that is carried through the machine and in to waste bins.

You can look up baseball sheets on Ebay and will see that some sheets have a profound borders and some don’t but either way it will be the same picture if you cut it out with scissors except the border will be bigger as you can take from the other surrounding cards or the picture itself will continue a little longer to make a bigger card. The machine has what they call lay stops that advise you if it was inserted correctly into the machine but sheets are transported into the machine with a vacuum system and can be within 1/16” on every sheet being feed.

I haven’t run a machine since they took my tools away from me and have never seen a baseball sheet made but cigarette packs to display boxes can’t be that different.

I have many sheets from the yearly 90’s as I had a friend who owned a recycling plant that had some sent to them to be recycled into fiber board. If I wanted to get rid of them, which I don’t, I would be wise to cut the more popular playing cards out a little larger and call them a proof and would surely improve my income from them. Yes I could also make a regular card but what value would that be to a collector.

Here is a picture of me some 15 years ago in a brochure that our company had made with me working on a 35 x 48 Bobst blanking machine.

I will not change my stance on oversize cards unless there is an appearance change other then a bigger or extended surface because of the above knowledge. At best they could be added to the oddball page but then do you add the known sheets?

Stepping off my soap box,
Jonas