Typically, how many color tints on printing plates?

CollectorAtWork

I recently picked up my first printing plate (a 2012 Topps Archive Ruth) here: Link. Out of curiosity, does anyone know, typically how many different color printing plates are needed for a card, and which colors? I have seen magenta, yellow, and cyan, but was wondering if there were others? Thanks!

aberdeentradingco

CMYK----Cyan (blue), Magenta (red), Yellow, Black....
technically, black is not needed, but is used to sharpen the printed images...

mygotta

Traditionally its a 4-color process as mentioned above. Some modern printers will use additional colors like green and orange. But I dont know if they would do that in this type of printing.

CollectorAtWork

Thanks for the info!

CNote

Glad to see we have knowledgeable people that know it's a 4cp, and don't just say "well, I think there's about 35,000 colors on there.... so that's a lot of plates!"

Stone193

Just to add - the off-set printing process uses 4 colors.

Before economical off-set printing - I think it started in the 30s? - the chromolithograph process in cards - like T206s e.g. - used many more plates/colors to produce their final product.

I've read where some used 12 or more colors - just imagine how tough it was to keep registration when using 20 or 25 plates/stones?

CNote

I think the USPS still uses 8 plates, but with the modern printers, once registration is set it doesn't ship during printing. The same applied for our 4cp offset presses in the optical disc plant I worked at.