Saturday, January 13, 2018

Favorite Card of 2017 Update

My Favorite Card of 2017 has a new parallel sibling in the collection.


When I started the chase for the Jose Quintana rainbow, this Black Printing Plate of the Chrome version was sitting on eBay for a hefty $89.99.

Cue the sad trombone.

In the meantime, the Magenta Plate of the regular version showed up in auction format with a reasonable starting price. I ended up being the only bidder and won it for about $11 shipped.

Meanwhile, the other one sat on my watch list through two 30-day cycles unsold. When it rolled over a third time without any kind of price adjustment, I decided to submit a Best Offer of what amounted to $15.00 shipped.

In the offer I apologized for lowballing, but mentioned that the Magenta had sold for closer to $10 and asked if he had any wiggle room. I expected a much higher counter offer but to my surprise, it was accepted without question.

And because of this generosity, I rewarded the seller by spending more money with him and picking up a couple more Cubs cards from him. I've got some scanning and cropping to do but those posts will come soon.

This makes the 19th version of the card in my collection.

Can somebody explain to me like I'm 5 years old why the Chrome plates are reversed while the regular card is not? This seems to be universal with Topps plates.

4 comments:

  1. I think it has to do with the way the cards are printed. My understanding is that the ones that look like the card are used in offset printing, where the image is transferred from the plate to a rubber blanket, reversing it, and then from that blanket to the card surface, reversing it again.

    The backward plates are used in gravure printing, which transfers the image directly from the plate to the card surface, reversing it so that it looks normal on the card.

    Someone with more experience in printing can probably do a better job of explaining it.

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    1. That's my understanding but I figured the Chrome version would be more complex therefore the need to run through twice with the plate having the normal card look. The regular card would just need one pass through and be reversed. But I clearly don't know!

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  2. No clue about plates and why one is reversed. But, I applaud your win on the "Best Offer." Maybe I should try a few BOs rather than waiting for the auctions to slowly decrease in price.

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    1. I did both! And when the price didn't come down, I took action.

      But I certainly applaud the seller for taking my reasoned logic to heart and realizing I offered a more than fair price.

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