25+ years ago when I was doing a lot of product development and graphic design work we used a lot of what we called rub downs which I'm guessing are dry transfers. We'd send out to have these made - you could specify any "pantone" color, including metallics. It was a photographic process where we'd provide repro art and get back sheets you would burnish onto whatever it was you wanted to apply type or graphics to.
These could be up to a couple hundred dollars a sheet back in the 80s. It all depended on the # of colors.
Very fragile, we'd always order a backup sheet or multiples of the thing on a sheet. Very fine detail would be lost/cracked quite easily.
Often the act of burnishing these down would affect whatever it was you were applying them to so you had to be very careful.
Later on there were products that were ink jet produced and not as nice as the ones that were produced photographically. Never as opaque.
I still have some of the flat pieces we used these rub downs on and 25 years later they look fine.
