Gretzky rc question

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jeff665

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Hello everyone,

Have you ever seen a gretzky rc like this one? It has little small circles everywhere? It looks like it is in the printing?

Thank you.

Here a close up shot
 

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They are common in the printing industry. What it is, is a spec of some type of dirt/metal etc. stuck on the printing plate, that was not getting washed away by the water solution used to clean the plates during printing. If you look at the colour of the circle, you can tell which plate it is actually on. In this case, it is on the magenta plate.

If you've ever scene negatives from old film before the digital age, these negatives are burned into, or embedded onto blank metal plates. Any image burnt onto a plate, whether it is black, yellow, cyan, or magenta attracts the ink to that image on the plate, and sticks to it, and is transferred to the paper, or cardboard. Any area of the plate without any images, gets washed away by the water solution. Occasionally, stuff gets stuck onto the plate, and not washed off. The ink pools around the spec of dust, dirt, metal, or whatever leaving that ring.

The blue line on the back of 1st run Gretzky rookies is really just a scratch across the cyan plate. The obviously changed the plate at some point throughout the run, and the new plate did not have that scratch across it.

I use to be a journeyman printer for the Toronto Sun newspaper.
 
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Leafsfan1967 said:
They are common in the printing industry. What it is, is a spec of some type of dirt/metal etc. stuck on the printing plate, that was not getting washed away by the water solution used to clean the plates during printing. If you look at the colour of the circle, you can tell which plate it is actually on. In this case, it is on the magenta plate.

If you've ever scene negatives from old film before the digital age, these negatives are burned into, or embedded onto blank metal plates. Any image burnt onto a plate, whether it is black, yellow, cyan, or magenta attracts the ink to that image on the plate, and sticks to it, and is transferred to the paper, or cardboard. Any area of the plate without any images, gets washed away by the water solution. Occasionally, stuff gets stuck onto the plate, and not washed off. The ink pools around the spec of dust, dirt, metal, or whatever leaving that ring.

The blue line on the back of 1st run Gretzky rookies is really just a scratch across the cyan plate. The obviously changed the plate at some point throughout the run, and the new plate did not have that scratch across it.

I use to be a journeyman printer for the Toronto Sun newspaper.
Click to expand...

That's some insightful background into the process. I've been curious about the origins of the infamous Gretzky yellow dot and the 1st print lines. Thank you for sharing. :beer:
 
Questions for the the ones who are familiar with grading : Has anyone sent a card with printing spots like this one to beckett or PSA? Thank you for your answers :)
 
Leafsfan1967 said:
They are common in the printing industry. What it is, is a spec of some type of dirt/metal etc. stuck on the printing plate, that was not getting washed away by the water solution used to clean the plates during printing. If you look at the colour of the circle, you can tell which plate it is actually on. In this case, it is on the magenta plate.

If you've ever scene negatives from old film before the digital age, these negatives are burned into, or embedded onto blank metal plates. Any image burnt onto a plate, whether it is black, yellow, cyan, or magenta attracts the ink to that image on the plate, and sticks to it, and is transferred to the paper, or cardboard. Any area of the plate without any images, gets washed away by the water solution. Occasionally, stuff gets stuck onto the plate, and not washed off. The ink pools around the spec of dust, dirt, metal, or whatever leaving that ring.

The blue line on the back of 1st run Gretzky rookies is really just a scratch across the cyan plate. The obviously changed the plate at some point throughout the run, and the new plate did not have that scratch across it.

I use to be a journeyman printer for the Toronto Sun newspaper.
Click to expand...

Great post, thanks for your insight. Ive had this conversation with other collectors, but the belief that the blue lines on the back signify the “1st print run” stumps me. It’s never been confirmed anywhere that it’s the 1st run, and I agree with your explanation of how the lines appeared. Thinking through it logically, it seems that the plate scratch would more likely have happened at some point in the middle or towards the end of the print run, not at the start. We don’t even know if multiple plates were used. And if OPC was going to replace a plate to fix a printing issue, why would they replace a back plate and not the plate on the front that caused the infamous yellow shoulder dot?

One thing we did confirm was that every card in the same column as Gretzky on the uncut sheet can be found with and without the same blue lines.

At one point we went down a rabbit hole of comparing the roughness of the edges of blue lines and non-blue lines cards and couldn’t find any correlation.
 
I would think the plate scratch would have been on the original plate, and corrected at some point during the run. We use to print the daily at night, and had our own plate makers on the same shift, but those guys also made the plates for anything that would be running in the daytime by another crew, so it is possible that the plates were made for the printers, and they ran with them until they were able to have someone come in, and make a new set? On a tabloid newspaper, the front, and back are on the same plate, so not sure about a smaller press for doing cards. I'd assume they are separate?

As for the shoulder dot, I can't recall what the colour was, but if it is a white dot, it is quite possible the actual negative used for the plates had some sort of imperfection on it, and when it was burnt to the plate itself, there was a blank spot on the shoulder of that area on the plates. Could have been just a very tiny piece of tape stuck on the neg. If there is no image burnt on a plate, the water that flushes the excess ink off would make that dot white. Ink only sticks to a burnt image. Hard to explain it, it's easier to show someone, if I could.

Here is a video of a similar press that I worked on in Toronto. This one is in Boston. Not a lot of these Goss Metro's monster presses in North America. https://www.facebook.com/globe/videos/10155491423408258/
 
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I pulled a Gretzky rookie shortly after the cards were at the corner stores back in the day and mine had the blue lines. Of course as to how many they initially produced before the initial product was sent out and then afterwards i have know idea.
 

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