Belgium as an example…
Belgium shouldn’t be involved in English 1st Edition Base Set, because WotC was only allowed to do North America in the beginning.
Not sure what you’re saying Belgium would be an example of.
The file affecting every card on the sheet with a certain characteristic
I might have misunderstood or perhaps the author of the article could have distorted the message. But it seems to me that they claim that the trap was on the same plate as the stamp (and THEN only transferred to the K plate for ghost Pickachu) :
In the photo above, this first edition stamp from the same era appears to be made of two different layers of black ink. However, the outline around some of the letters is actually a trap that is slightly misplaced on the printing plate.
…
What likely happened in the case of the “Ghost” stamp is that when the CMYK plates were being created, the trap part of the design for the first edition stamp that normally would have been on the additional plate was accidentally included on the regular plates for at least one of the Pikachu cards on the sheet.
Nitz thinks that a similar error during the conversion of the card data in the computer onto the actual plates may also be responsible for the “3D” effect that some first edition stamps display: “The vendor we used for that set of film negatives may have used some sort of auto-trapping software that could distort the trap versus the art.”
My understanding is that the trap wasn’t distorted vs the art on the same plate, but just on a separate plate from the start and that’s why the registration issues occurred as you explained.
Maybe that was what he was saying but the author wrote it down wrong.
1 Like
Thanks
I explained the sheet layout software in the FOR POSITION ONLY topic.
Sheet layout happens at WotC.
Each sheet position is linked to the card for that position, so a card that appears on the sheet multiple times will all link to the same card file.
Because this step happens at WotC, it doesn’t matter which facility they send it to for printing.
The print facility can’t accidentally change the sheet layout.
(well, I suppose they could swap quadrants around)
I didn’t see their conversation with Chris, so I can’t say for certain what was said, but I suspect this is the conclusion Chris would come to if he was only shown a single image of the 3D stamp, and is told there’s a bunch of stamps just like this.
If you show him multiple 3D stamps with different severity of Registration issues, then he comes to the conclusion I posted above.
The discrepancy is likely an issue with how much data was collected and how it was presented to him, or possibly with interpreting his answer.
2 Likes
Makes sense, thanks for the insight! 
1 Like
Not sure where else to put this info, so this seems like a decent spot.
The skinny vs. fat red HP at the top of the card is also caused by a change in the Trap Settings.
1 Like
There are also some 1999-2000 cards that seem to have included the wrong color trap so they have a black border that can be seen.
The registration errors can also be found on packs giving them an interesting effect.
2 Likes
I don’t believe this is an error, I believe this was done on purpose to negate and awkward 3-D effect that shifted layers create making it semi-difficult to see the numbers on some cards, speculation, of course. These variants are what i found to be USA prints