Cult-Stuff

Upper Deck have “settled” the lawsuit with the MLB… but only if you think settled means being publicly spanked, conceding just about every point your opponents have AND agreeing to pay not only last years disputed amounts but also an undisclosed amount for this years fiasco… oh and agreeing to detailed stipulations that essentially mean you can never make another baseball card…

In what can only be described as a MAJOR LEAGUE climb down these things have been agreed:

Upper Deck will pay MLB Properties more than $2.4 million (the entire amount in dispute) for Upper Deck’s 2009 debts.

Upper Deck will pay MLB Properties a substantial sum of money for the unlicensed cards it sold in 2010. The specific sum of that payment is confidential.

Upper Deck has agreed not to issue any additional releases of infringing cards. Last year it issued 15 baseball card releases and there are currently only three infringing releases that are in distribution in 2010.

Upper Deck agreed it will not make any new sets of cards using MLB logos, uniforms, trade dress, or Club color combinations.

Upper Deck also agreed it will not airbrush, alter or block MLB marks in future products.

Upper Deck must receive approval from MLB for the use of baseball jerseys, pants, jackets, caps, helmets or catcher’s equipment in future products featuring players.

That’s a big change in attitude from just one month ago when Upper Deck kept stating they were in the right. Upper Deck are in real trouble, they are hemorrhaging licenses and have been ripped apart with lawsuits… This is just weeks after Blizzard announced an end to the World of Warcraft agreement. Upper Deck true to form blamed poor sales and attempted to say THEY had decided not to renew which is far from the reality, my understanding is that Blizzard puled the plug for a number of reasons, the counterfeit YuGiOh case playing a major part in the decision.

Again Upper Deck made a laughable attempt to spin the outcome of that settlement as well. It seems Upper Deck subscribe to the idea that if you SAY you won people might believe it even when all the evidence is to the contrary. Without Yu-Gi-Oh and World of Warcraft Upper Deck have very little to offer game card enthusiasts. They have Huntik which is a weaker seller than World of Warcraft (WoW), and the Marvel Card Game rights… which is also not a great seller. As far as market penetration is concerned these brands really have very little to offer thus far. You will not find Hutnik in your local convenience store and the Marvel Vs. System isn’t popping up in many mainstream retail outlets.

This lack of penetration is going to hurt the bottom line for Upper Deck, as customers fail to find products at retail. At the same time they are paying people off left and right, while pulling out of expensive promotions. They had signed up to give away thousands of packs of the Marvel Vs. card game in tandem with the annual free comic book day event around the world, along with a “National Pack Time Promotion” which would have seen hobby shops handing out free packs of Baseball cards to visitors on the 6th of March. Both of these promotions would have cost Upper Deck a substantial amount of money, which it is now not going to spend.

The YuGiOh suit ended with an undisclosed finical settlement, what we do know however is that Upper Deck have already made the first of the two agreed payments, and the second is to follow in the next few months. These payments and the dates they must be made within are very strict indeed. The MLB will be paid the outstanding $2.4Mil. they are owed and an undisclosed sum for the three sets that breached it’s trademarks, all of this together leads to speculation of finical trouble within Upper Deck.

If you settle out of court at least you may recover something, in court of the company is forced into bankruptcy the reality is creditors will receive very little, so from that standpoint the last two cases have been wisely dealt with. Upper Deck have said they will carry on with baseball cards, but it is difficult to see how they can, and who would be interested in a set that have no team names, or statistics, or in fact any players in uniform… It’s extremely unlikely to happen.

They still have some strong sports licenses and they still have a lot going on with the Marvel rights they hold, but the last 6 months have clearly hurt them and if some insiders are to be believed taken them to the financial brink. Of course a lot of people will say (myself included) that they brought these troubles upon themselves through years of dishonesty and deception, and in many respects they are lucky to still be in business at all. The real question is will they still be around next year?

You can read more about this from the great folks at the Blowout forum

A lot of people have been asking for a True Blood card set, unfortunately at this time the license is not going to be made available to any one. You can add True Blood to a long list of properties that as far as cardboard is concerned might as well not exist. Many companies and studios seem unwilling to license trading card products for a lot of varying reasons, (often they simply don’t feel it’s worth the time and effort) and that leaves collectors and companies without cards that consumers would have wanted. Up until recently that was just the way it was. 258 West Authentic (named for it’s street address) have set out to change this with a new and innovative plan.

Rather than license the TV show or film itself they went after each individual actor, licensing the rights to the person rather than the character. This has a lot of added benefits for card collectors and autograph hunters alike. The truth is, no matter how much we all want a show to make it they are often only a few rough ratings weeks away from cancellation. This means your expensive and great autograph of  star X as character Y could soon be worth a lot less and little on the unfortunate side. Lets face a lot of collectors don’t really WANT a card from a cancelled program or a film that tanked….(exceptions always apply to that)  I know a lot of card collectors who buy a card from a set they have no interest in simply because they like the actor, and this type of licensing can really help out in that respect because now regardless of the show you have the actor.

A great example of this would be the Zachary Quinto autograph cards. He was Sylar in Heroes and now more recently Spock in the rejuvenated Star Trek franchise. To purchase these cards your looking at $75.00 for Heroes and about $190.00 for Trek respectively, yet you can grab the same autograph from 258 for about $25.00, and the back of the over-sized card has a photo of the man himself signing the cards.

They produced on the card signatures for a lot of the Heroes cast which appealed to many folks who hate the new security label (sticker) autograph cards that have taken over the hobby. The cards from the cast of Heroes were over-sized, (twice the size of a regular 2.5X3.5 card) and that put a few people off however 258 are now bringing us the normal sized cards that are compatible with all the accessories most card hunters have in abundance.

That means we will be seeing the cast of some great shows and movies added to the cardboard collection.While 258 have been around for a while they seem to be moving into a higher gear and have released 4 cards featuring autographs from actors in the hit show True Blood, (I am told more are planned) and now they are soliciting for three great signatures from Supernatural actors.

The four signers involved with True Blood are Nelsan Ellis, Allan Hyde, Ashley Jones, and William Sanderson. Buying any of the cards from 258 means you also have a chance of obtaining some interesting intentional variants. Again in the non-sports side this is something new, a small percentage of the cards have been altered so rather than a white background signature area it is black and signed in silver, this gives these limited cards a great look.  The Allan Hyde, Ashley Jones and William Sanderson cards are each limited to 240 Black pen on a White cards and 60 Silver pen on a black while the Nelsan Ellis is limited to 400 Black pen on White and 100 Silver pen on a black, I am told the card you get is random and this seems like such a basic idea it is surprising the bigger companies have not been using it in non-sports.

The next three autographs due out (as mentioned above) are from actors in the Supernatural show. The rights to produce Supernatural trading cards had been held by inkworks but when they went under the studio declined to re-license the show for the cardboard community, thankfully 258 have come in with some new products aimed at these existing fans. Actors already anounced include Misha Collins (Castiel), Rob Benedict (Chuck), and Julie McNiven (Anna Miltion).

Castiel Autograph available in June

Again it has to be stressed that these cards are of the actors and they have been in a number of other programs so these cards have a much larger appeal than anything aimed at just one program or film. These products could help cross the gap between card collectors and autograph collectors, which could in turn bring new fans to an ailing hobby that has been rocked with scandals.  258 want to change the way many people collect autograph cards and I think they have a shot at doing just that.  Marco says he is aiming to bring out between three and five new cards every 6 weeks, which isn’t bad when you consider the prices he is charging, (under $35.00) and the authentication the cards have.  Check out the 258 West website for updates and more information.

Just a quick image of some of the sketch cards submitted for our upcoming sets. These are literally the cards that were sat in a pile on my desk. They have not all been approved, but I had to do a quick desk clean before I fly off so I grabbed a photo of a few. We have a lot more to come but I thought some of you might like to see a sneak preview. I really should clear up my desk more often I guess.

Welcome

From time to time I will add posts that cover a multitude of topics, not all of which sure things, but at the same time are worth talking about….  it’s not 100% set in stone unless I clearly state it’s a fact folks. Enjoy!

New Bond Autos

So whats up in cards? Well unless you have been living in a cave you may have read on other sites that Rittenhouse Archives have secured the signature of Daniel Craig for the new bond set. That’s going to be the new must have card for a lot of folks now and great news for collectors. You can read a lot more about it over at NSU and don’t forget hobby insider which broke the story originally, kudos to them. This one is a fact it would seem.

Factory Entertainment Grabs Universal Monsters

Factory Entertainment have the rights to produce products including cards on the old Universal line. A lot of potential on a set like this, and horror cards are very very popular at the moment. Lets hope for autographs, props and sketches! The news seems to have been missed by a lot of the regular sites but it was announced on the 14th of Jan. Sets are due out this year!

Avatar Cards:

OK rumour time: I have good information that the rights to produce cards biased on James Cameron’s Avatar film have been sold. Someone has the rights… That is not to say a set will ever come out, but it could. I can’s tell you who it is but I can tell you who it’s not. It’s not Factory Entertainment, Breygent, or Artbox… realistically that only leaves a few, Upper Deck, which is doubtful, Topps, NECA, or Rittenhouse…. Now Rittenhouse has had a cast member sign in the new lost set, and I have little doubt they would be the popular choice. Only time will tell. My hunch? Topps or Rittenhouse. (I have still not seen this film)

:::EDIT::: It has been pointed out to me (correctly) that I missed several potential manufacturers for these cards, including  Press Pass, Dizzy Heights Entertainment, Dynamic Forces, and of course Panini… (I have no idea how I left them out) out of those four I would personally have thought only Panini is in with a chance, they have an amazing worldwide the distribution network and a lot of money behind them…  Thanks to Tom for pointing out the sloppy way in which I missed these companies!

The Green Hornet:

The new film is out in December, and Factory Entertainment very recently announced that they have a license to produce collectibles and gifts based on the original series and the new film. Could we have cards on the horizon? A Seth Rogen autograph card anyone? What about a Bruce Lee Kato Cut Sig? It’s all conjecture at the moment…. watch this space.

Cult-Stuff news and travel…

Last month was very busy, our busiest month yet in fact. The sight was linked to by several UK newspapers, some of our stories were picked up by other media outlets, and our Upper Deck Crime-line of events article was actually linked to by the folks who host the legal documents we used to write it! We had more than 100,000 page requests in January, and I just wanted to thank those who take the time to read this stuff. We have had a ton of feedback, some good and some bad, but all of it is welcome. You will see us popping up in more places next month.

The site will probably not be updated between the 13th of Feb and the 16th of Feb, as I will be in the USA attending the OVMS Show of Shows at the Kentucky Expo centre. For those who have no idea what that is it’s the single largest militaria collectibles show in America. We might even have some promos if anyone is interested enough to show up. You can find more details on this on our sister site HERE

Official Statement Link

I want to be happy and say I told you so but I really cant do it, this really isn’t something I am pleased about. Over the last few weeks since we broke the story about Ray Harryhausen and Strictly Ink a great deal of what I will call “unpleasant things” have been said. Throughout all of this we stood by the story because it was true, and now considering the statement released by the official Harryhausen site, I guess perhaps some of the doubters should reconsider some of the things that they are willing to believe, or at least consider the source.

The best defence is the truth, and that’s what we reported. It resulted in threads being closed, people refusing our ads, lies being told and a lot of unhappy folks, BUT it has also hopefully helped to stop a great creator from being robbed of his rights for nothing more than some sketch cards. Ray Harryhausen has a Charity Foundation and they have not seen a penny of the money from these cards. Some of the industries top artists have been working on these yet on many of the cards no copyright information appears at all.

In this day in age that really should have raised some red flags for anything that’s not already public domain, but then again Strictly Ink have been in business for a long time so I cant blame people for giving them the benefit of the doubt. I don’t know what the fallout from this will be, but hopefully Ray will not get ripped off any more and some of the less than polite things being said will stop. We should have no place in the Hobby for this sort of thing.

Quick run down: As has been covered in many places Upper Deck and Konami have settled, lots of money to change hands documents sealed first payment made.. case over. Crap talking starts… and quickly out of the gate is Richard McWiliam, King of his own world and not so eloquent owner of Upper Deck came at us with this.

“Though we are delighted that Konami was finally forced to see the light regarding its claims, there is, of course, a bittersweet side to the ending of this dispute,” McWilliam said. “During the six years we spent building the Yu-Gi-Oh! brand we formed strong ties to the playing community, and, in the end, they are the ones that suffered most because of this lawsuit. Instead of focusing on the merits of the case, Konami focused its efforts on pursuing exaggerated claims and damages which it could not establish in the courtroom.”

I mean wow I need some syrup to help wash all that waffle down…

This is what attorney Richard Howell, of Rutan & Tucker, who represented Upper Deck during the trial said:

“At this point, Upper Deck doesn’t have a lot of Life Points. We’re talking about behavior that, from a defence attorney’s standpoint, I can’t defend and I am not going to defend,”  ”I’m here defending a counterfeiter. And now I have to deal with that issue.”

This is the guy that was on Upper Decks side.. so you know that says a lot..  Still Konami said:

The cover-up included a meeting in the office of Upper Deck’s chairman, in which he and at least one other Upper Deck employee compared samples of authentic Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG cards against fakes made by Upper Deck, and shredded the samples in the chairman’s office, as well as an e-mail from an employee of Upper Deck to other employees asking to provide her information on how to obtain Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG security foils ‘in secrecy.’

And as you all ready know you can read a lot more about that here

NOW they are going to be sued by Major League Baseball Properties INC. (that’s the MLB to you and me) The papers were filed in New York on the 31st of Jan. and reference the recent Yu-Gi-Oh case extensively. The short and sweet aspect is this: Upper Deck lost the rights to make MLB cards, if they wanted to keep making Baseball cards they would have to stop using the logos associated with the MLB so airbrushing them out among other potential solutions had been talked about, their are ways around the situation in theory, and Upper Deck stated that they would still be making Baseball cards, so people assumed that they had a plan in mind. Apparently the plan was to just ignore the fact that they lost the license and make them anyway. Intellectual Property is clearly not something that Upper Deck have any concept of. I will read the papers as they come in and as with last time I will post a synopsis. It just seems like Upper Deck cant stay out of court.

A second New Moon set has been announced by NECA, now with randomly inserted autographs, (no insert ratios or names at this time). We have been sitting on some NECA information for about a month now waiting for more corroboration (two independent sources gave us very similar information) and this new announcement adds enough to make us bring it to the public.

By many collectors Twilight autographs are considered rare, and tend to sell for a fair amount, on card autographs are very very rare, or so you might think, now it would seem this is not the case. The information we have been given which should be treated as a reliable rumor and not Gospel, is that NECA have had at LEAST 10,000 twilight autographs. Most of them are the same and they paid the actors next to nothing per card….  (Like $1.00 man…)

Now I can already hear the clamor to tell me that’s not true and they have nothing LIKE that number but hey lets do the math and see what you think then:

Only 5,000

Lets start with the Amazon Exclusive Twilight card set (reprint of inkworks set) with a binder AND one of 5000 Peter “my hand hurts” Facinelli autograph cards… then came the Amazon Exclusive Cullen Crest Prop Replica WITH another 3000 autograph cards this time from Ashley Green, and now a bone of contention that can be put to rest once and for all: The Topps European New Moon Photo Cards came with a redemption token. I have talked to Topps, in fact I talked to the head or redemption’s for Topps UK (that’s the nice lady who send stuff out to you) and Steve Conner the important sounding “Sales Manager for Topps Europe Ltd.” (Still looking forward to that response Steve, and I hope you had a nice holiday) And it has been confirmed that the redemption cards are in fact 1,000 more Ashley Green cards,

Amazons 3,000 + Topps 1,000...

identical to the other Amazon cards BUT now with the added inclusion of a Topps Authentic sticker.. That’s just the way it is folks from the horses mouth.. so get over it. now we are at a total of…. hang on.. hold the 1… and umm oh yes that’s right 9,000 autographs that we already know about produced for NECA, and yet not one inserted into a pack or a box yet… That 10,000 number is not sounding so far fetched now is it…

But wait now we ave the New Moon 2 set which is… wait for it… THE SAME SET as new moon 1 only this time with some slightly differing chase cards, (if your lucky) 12 additional cards AND some autographs (I bet it’s Ashley Green to the tune of 1,000 cards)

Thus proving that old adage that you can take a slightly unhappy looking emo girl to hot topic AND make her buy the same thing twice…

Shiny Ones AKA Target Demographic

In all seriousness we don’t know what autograph cards will be included in this “new” (That’s new meaning reprint) set, it could be a bunch of exciting folks about to be unleashed on this set and the public (don’t count on it) and that would be great for some fans I guess, but keep this in mind, NECA had at least 9,000 autographs in hand before the first New Moon boxes came out, (the pre orders on Amazon Exclusive items pre-date the release of the New Moon boxes) and decided not to put any in the packs, because they new the sets would sell without them, now that are going to put some in packs and sell you the same thing again. To me that’s harsh, and a level of cynicism that not even twilight fans deserve.  But they will sell very well no doubt.

NECA have obviously not commented. This is mostly because they don’t respond to emails, and have no email, phone number, address, or ANY other contact details on the official NECA site. You have to submit a web form and they will get back to you (or not as it happens). Oh and don’t expect a lot of Hobby Support for these cards they are almost 100% set to be chain store exclusives.  (I bet on Hot Topic and Target at this point….)

If we know of 9,000+ autographs from 2 actors (more in all probability) what would that make the secondary market value long term? I would guess close to zero… In which case if your buying for investment then don’t buy NECA. If you just really love Twilight, or your a completest nut, then this is the stuff for you.

Unless you have been very badly out of the loop you will already be aware that AMC and ITV produced new reinterpretation of the classic Prisoner mini series, it aired in the US at the end of last year and is due for release in the UK very soon. Factory Entertainment hold the license to produce the cards for this and for the classic series, and although the ratings were not as high as some may have liked (it still did respectable numbers) in the US, they remained committed to releasing the set. We can now reveal one of the big reasons why, they have a top notch autograph card driving this set. None other than Sir Ian McKellen.

Ian's Signed Card (A2)

McKellen is as as I have no doubt most folks are aware is a big name, a classically trained actor with miles of credits to his name he has been given the cardboard treatment in the past as Gandalf (Lord of the Rings)and Magneto (X-Men etc.) Now he will be appearing as Number 2. This is a great signing for Factory Entertainment and for the new series Prisoner set in general. His signing will no doubt bring in some collectors who thought about skipping this set.

This image should start to get a little more interest moving in a set that looks like it’s going to have some very very nice inserts. At this point we don’t know the ratio or number of signed cards completed, in fact the only thing we know for sure is that Carolyn Edwards has completed sketch cards, and Ian McKellen has signed. Watch this space for more updates! I wonder who A1 will be….

A great card that should never have been made...

Another day another corrupt Non Sports manufacturer. Some of you may know that over the last few months I have been gathering information about Barrie Roness and his company Strictly Ink, the reason it has not been published is simple, every time I look into something another problem pops up. Over time a lot of negative things have been said about Strictly Ink and I cant think of one that hasn’t been true. No doubt I am going to get a lot of flak for this much of which will come from some unnamed dealers who have been taking kick backs incentives from Barrie for a long time now.

I want to be very clear on this, I have met Barrie, and I used to deal with him and his company extensively, that all came to an end some time ago when questions about his ethics started to surface. So many questions have been raised about his dealings that I couldn’t possible detail them all in this one article. Because of that we  will publish more in the weeks to come, highlighting problems including BBC licensing, questions about numbered and unnumbered limited sets, his Hammer Licensing problems, the fact that we have autograph cards that are signed and dated 3 years AFTER the sets initial release, the holding back of top end inserts to sell on eBay…. with so many to chose from it can be hard to find a place to start.

Today however we are going to talk about the acts of  deception committed by Barrie Roness in relation to one product. Every word of this can be and has been backed up by lawyers, they in fact are the ones who after some considerable time provided me with much of this information.

Stunning but unlicensed

In 2006-7 Barrie approached Rays then agent to talk about cards, including sketch cards, and these were provisionally authorised, if and ONLY IF Strictly Ink obtained appropriate copyright permissions from the film studios. (The copyright to these films are held with Sony Pictures (Columbia) along with others including Universal and Warner Bros.). As many have found obtaining a license to produce anything can be a time consuming and costly endeavour, and often dealing with large company’s like film studios can be difficult but these are the things that a legitimate company must deal with to make products work.

Rather than do this Strictly Ink simply produced sketch card blanks and promos and started having them filled in. Sony noticed this and in November of 2007 issued them with a Cease and Desist which bars them from reproduction, advertising, marketing, publicity, distribution, or any other form or use of their proprietary material. Strictly Ink were also required to recall and destroy all such materials INCLUDING all trading cards.

Yearset 2009 Advert Click for full size

Soon after this the set was pulled from it prominent position on the site. The sketch cards however were sold, and included in his “yearbox” products, in direct violation of the order from Sony. Not only did he fail to destroy the cards but he went on to knowingly commission MORE to be included in the 2009 yearbox product. He states that these are “unreleased” which I am sorry is a fairly naive attempt at a slight of hand. These cards are advertised as a core component of his product and he had commissioned artists to draw work  especially for this product.

Newly Printed "Gold Edge" cards

He has also had new cards printed for his “gold edged cards” Note that the card design is totally different to the other sketch cards pictured.  He has attempted to say they are unreleased and yet he keeps releasing them onto the market. He has advertised them and commissioned more 2 years AFTER being told to stop. He is still commissioning new work to sell as “unreleased”. This is simple: The very fact that he is advertising, and selling these cards individually or as part of a larger package means that they are de facto “released”. Yet he has the audacity to have a tag line under his new logo which reads “Officially Licensed Trading Cads since 1999″

According to a partner at Turcan Connell the solicitors who represent Ray Harryhausen and the Ray and Diana Harryhausen Foundation (a registered charity)

“There is no agreement in place by which Strictly Ink is authorised on behalf of Ray Harryhausen or the Foundation to produce any new sketch material”

Their is no justification for what he has done and is still doing, he is aware that he holds no rights to the subject matter nor is he paying anything to use them, but he is profiting from other peoples hard work. (I would like to point out that none of the artists involved would have known about this, they are freelance and would have had no reason to think anything was amiss).  That said if your thinking of buying any of these cards, my advice would be not to. I don’t care how great they look. I guess each person will make there own choice though.

These cards that Strictly Ink produced and continue to commission are unlicensed and unofficial. I understand that Turcan Connell would like Roness and Strictly Ink to cease and desist with any use of Ray Harryhausen’s name and he can expect that to be confirmed in writing shortly. These cards are exploiting one of the best and most well respected stop motion animators the world has ever seen, I wonder when the card industry fell so low as to exploit an elderly man just to make a little cash….

The information regarding the status of the licensing agreements and or the lack thereof has been provided to us by TURCAN CONNELL solicitors for Ray Harryhausen.