I have a quick question. I have two copies of GAZ1 and they are slightly different. The one I bought from an American store has the tower image in light blue and the borders done in a darker blue. My second copy, which I purchased from a vendor in the UK happens to have light purple towers and darker purple page borders. Everything else about the supplement is the same, as far as I can tell.

I don't see any mention of this difference here on The Acaeum - only a difference between TSR addresses between the 1st and 2nd printing. My two copies each have the same address, so that doesn't explain the difference as far as I can tell.

Anyone have any insight into this?

We often had minor (and on rare occasions, major) variations in color.

When the print runs went up, the larger printers being used induced larger variations at times. This was the case for many items in 1982-86. Dunno about later.

/stuff they don't teach you in printer school

Once the plates are in place, you run a few copies (or a few dozen or hundred, varying mostly by sheetfed vs web) to check things. If they're 'close enough' (sometimes defined by how cheap the printer's financial people are), they get used. And flaky printers (not a rare breed) sometimes save most of these early test runs, run 'em through the bindery, stick 'em in the middle of the stacks on the pallets, and hope the client's QC people don't notice. ::sigh::

You usually can't get away with bad registration. You can easily get away with color variations.

/end stdtyips

Frank Mentzer