Ex-Newspaper guy here.

TLDR: this is a plate that was never used in production and is definitely not one of a kind. We would easily re-create these all the time at the printing plant. I have a framed one for 9/11 (actually the front page for Sept 12; yay newspapers) even though I didn’t work in newspapers until 2005.

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These are called plates. They’re attached to rollers that spin through ink vats. The deeper parts of the plates “hold” the ink so when the plates eventually touch the paper, the deeper sections are printed out.

This plate was never used for production. Plates are always the -negative- (inverse) of what actually gets printed, because they’re mounted to the outside of the rollers, which pass through the paper (like a belt in a car engine).

For a paper with massive circulation like the NYT, hundreds of these plates would need to be made. They could also be recreated at any time in the plate machine days, months, and years later.

I’m sure you could have one made today if you wanted to.