Topps printing plates question??

Stingray

Notice on the Tony Gonzales thread that the printing plates are backwards which is the way I would think they should be. But why are the 2008 Topps baseball one facing the the same way as the actual card?? How can you print unless it is backwards??

Stingray

Anyone??

bunt

There was a thread like this over on the the non sports side a few months back - if it's a real printing plate then the picture has to be reverse of the card - kinda common sense. I don't know of any printing technique where the cards could be printed from non obverse angle I consider the non obverse plates to be simple gimmicks. Someone did though on that thread try and explain it - but it made no sense.

Stingray

Found and don't get either. Not sure how the 2008 baseball plates were not made to be backwards??

MeteoriteGuy

The plates do not come in contact with the paper. Rollers pick up the ink and transfer it, sometimes to other rollers, sometimes directly to the paper. In the Topps printing process, the Chromes are always backwards and the normal issue is not.

ssollars

The standard "offset" printing method which I assume is used for most card printing (among most other things printed on a printing press) use a plate that holds a non-reflected sub-image (representing one color of the process, CMYK usually) of the image to be printed. As described above offset printing transfers this image to a rubber blanketed roller (now shown reversed) before than transferring it to the final material being printed on.

The reversed plates either use a different printing method or perhaps are used to print to the backside of clear material which is meant to be view from the non-printed side.

Scott