I had a nice surprise over the weekend when a parcel arrived from the good people at SideKick Media (the folks who made the most excellent Suckadelic). Inside much to my pleasure was a sample promo box of the new Art Hustle product.

This is essentially the same as a normal box however rather than 36 packs it has 8 and none of the sketch and autos, which is a very cool idea. As you can see the boxes are very impressive to look at at and they have really gone to town on the packaging. These are the real wax packs of yesteryear.

They look feel and even smell just like old wax used to. Each pack also includes a stick of gum, produced by Topps for the real vintage effect. The cards are of course printed on the retro cardboard stock that is so rare now but was the norm before Upper Deck entered the card market in the early 90’s. They look and feel vintage which is a great contradiction when you consider how modern the subject matter is. My first impression of these cards has been overwhelmingly that I need to get more of them.

The set s composed of 162 basic cards and they are all about different artists and the varying styles they use. This eclectic blend of of modern art placed on a vintage card stock creates an interesting and contradictory experience, you have this brand new product that feels like it is so much older. The base cards are vivid and capture your attention immediately, they have images of the artists themselves and also selections of the work they have produced. The artists and the work shown in the set  is impressively diverse, but the different styles add to the overall appeal of the set. The 8 packs brought out 53 different base cards so nearly 1/3 of the set which really isn’t bad going at all, but collation shouldn’t be a problem with these anyway because each of the limited edition boxes has assembled by hand to make sure that every box contains the right number of inserts and at least on basic set. You should really have a look at the interview and photos they have in an article up on the NSU site, it’s very impressive and provides a lot of insight into the way these cards have been manufactured.

The back of the box

These boxes as I mentioned are very limited, with only 300 produced in all and retailing at $126.00 a box. That’s almost twice the “normal” price for a box of mass produced TV or Film tie in cards, however this is higher brow stuff, intended for an adult market, and those with an appreciation of art not just cards. They also have a LOT of incentive cards in a box, each box boasts 2 sketch/art cards, and 10 autograph/tag cards. That puts the price in a much better perspective.  The set has 75 contributors and the web site really sums up what

Open Box

the whole thing is about:

The Art Hustle is a set of artist and art-based trading cards produced by The Cardhacks and manufactured in the USA by SideKick Media. The set is very much a collaborative effort with artists, and exhibits an international group working in multiple disciplines, including street art, toy art, kaiju, sketch, illustration, painting, aerosol art, poster art, collage, digital art, sculpture, photography and more.

The cards are bold and clearly this is a foundation on which it is hoped future sets can follow. Having seen the results first hand I think it would be extremely unfortunate if we didn’t see a second series of the Art Hustle. These cards are some of the most innovation and interesting to come out in a long time. In an industry dominated by popular entertainment (read film and television) these cards provide a window into something much more intriguing. You cant buy the DVD, these cards could be the only opportunity you get to see some of the art they display. It’s a new set as opposed to the next formulaic Cash Cow of the Clones sets the industry has become used to. .  In short this is a great looking set of cards, it has loads of quality inserts, and breaths new creativity into what can at times be a stagnant hobby.

Art Hustle Promos

If you have a real interest in cards or art then head out and grab some of these before they sell out, you absolutely will not be  disappointed. You can find them for sale here

Oh and they also sent this additional promo card along, to make sure we all have something else to look forward to later in the year.

OK buckle up because this is a weird one. If you know your card history as many of you do then you know what Odd Rods are, if you don’t then this is the short sweet non Scott Baio version. (that will become clearer later) back in 1969 Donruss wanted a set of cards that had monsters driving cars, they hired B.K Taylor to draw them and and the great Odd Rods set was born. These stickers/cards were a hit and several sets came out during the 1970′s.

Now Donruss like Odd Rods is no more, the company folded years ago, taking many of the old sets with it, accept apparently that’s not the case, you see a Limited Company by the name of DZ Hart has claimed ownership of the trademark and rights to the Odd Rods brand which they say they acquired as recently as 2006. DZ is a difficult company to get in touch with and they so far have not responded to our emails. What I can tell you about them is that they have virtually no public identity on-line with that company name, aside from the facebook page I linked to above, but the folks behind it (David and Zola Hart) are the owners and operators of Tart Optical and the now closed yet almost but not quite wittily named Four Your Eyes Optical boutique in LA. This is a company that sells tricked out and pimped up second hand sorry “Vintage” style glasses frames to the stars, and err.. anyone else with money. They did sell a pair to Johnny Depp though back in 2004 so ummm that’s nice.

They have moved onto Odd Rods and employ this marketing firm which has spent some money on promoting brand image and trying (a little to hard in my view) claw money from potential investors. They even have yes you got it Scott Baio to do a promotional video for the brand…  yes thats right Chachi loves money Odd Rods…. (while disliking the  unemployed and first lady). Now my understanding is that Scott is available for two fingers of KitKat and return bus fair but hey you know.. it’s still better than… I don’t know I guess getting your mom to do the voice over… then again I don’t know your mom so I might be wrong. You can really see the love he has for the topic if you watch the video…

www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cwmGxWBRjI

I like it best when he talks about “Your Revenue + Odd Rods” I had my wallet out at that point… Anyway they say it’s a property that they own and they have the Odd Rods Domain as well. But the ownership it seems is a matter of some dispute and this is where it gets MORE complicated. B.K Taylor says the exclusive intellectual property rights are his. Now he did draw all of them some 40 years ago, so you know creators rights do spring to mind.  He instructed his lawyer to contacted some potential investors that were going to do business with DZ Hart and the Odd Rods brand (they wanted to make animated online adverts) and let them know his side of things. These investors in turn got in touch with DZ Hart (as you would) to find out what’s going on. B.K Taylor maintains that he owns the Odd Rods as he created all the art for them, DZ Hart disputes B.K has or ever had exclusive rights to the brand. Enter the lawyers.

To make things more confusing it seems DZ Hart had apparently previously HAD an arrangement with B.K Taylor (again remember he created all of the first Odd Rods). They say B.K Taylor was going to provide artwork and act as a consultant on future projects involving the brand. According to DZ Hart no work had been done by Jan 2009 so the agreement was cancelled as it was never acted upon, with all rights then reverting to DZ Hart Ltd. At the same time however they say that if any rights are held by B.K then they are in the public domain because he abandoned said rights… this sounds a lot like “I want have the cake but if it’s yours I’m going to eat it anyway“…  DZ Hart have taken this to court in California seeking Declaratory Judgement to offer relief from any proposed litigation B.K may attempt to take. This is a peremptory measure seeking the clarification via the courts as to the ownership of the Intellectual Property rights surrounding the Odd Rods. DK Hart in layman’s terms wants the court to say several things:

DK Hart want the court to say:

B.K Taylor does not have exclusive rights to the Odd Rods property

B.K Taylor can not attempt to enforce any disputed rights issues on DZ Hart or it’s business partners

DZ Hart and any or all of it’s business partners are free to commercialize (i.e profit from) not only the Odd Rods but also any derivations, and or future versions of them with no interference from B.K Taylor (or his lawyer if we are being pedantic which clearly we are.)

DZ would also like costs and damages.

Clearly B.K Taylor would like none of that to happen.

The motion they filed with the court was on the 17th of June and it gives B.K Taylor 21 days from his receipt of the documents to respond to them.  That should be sometime next week so stay tuned, and we will cover his response as fully as we can.

More reading on this: IP Trademark Site

Thread on NSU

Comment:

It looks a lot like BK Taylor and David and Zola Hart had an agreement that fell apart and now B.K Taylor, the guy who created all of these cards in the first place is landed in a situation of fighting for any rights to his creations.  It’s a bizarre situation over a very old card set, but it would be great to see some new B.K Taylor art on a set.

I have been unable to find contact details for B.K Taylor if anyone has those we would love to talk to him.

Copyright can be a tricky issue, its something that has been written about on this site a number of times and we try to expose those folks who try and rip off the unsuspecting public. With that in mind I cant say I am shocked to be doing it again. Ebay is awash with bargains but lurking amongst them are a lot of fakes, and one seller in particular be highlighted today, because he just seems so brazen. The Seller is from the UK and trades under the name of justtheheroes-uk with 3000+ positive feedback this guy really highlights whats wrong with the ebay feedback system. His real name is Justin Shorthouse from Portsmouth and he has a cottage industry in making and selling fake “props”, including cards. I bought an item from him to see what he was all about.

The item was the Judge Dredd badge or as he calls it

“JUDGE DREDD PROP BADGE IN FRAME ,2000 AD”

This is a low quality RESIN CAST of the very high quality and fully licensed Termight Replicas badge. Justin glued it to a bit of wood and smeared the whole thing with gold paint. This was then stuck to a bit of cardboard with a very home printed logo under it placed in a cheap box frame and shipped.

The Resin Jimp Cast

Thats a far far cry from the 24crt gold plated double broach pinned version available from Termight and shown in the first photo. It was clear right away that this was a fake so I contacted Termight who have now confermed that Justin did indeed buy one from them back in 2006. He may well have been selling the fakes for 4 years. He gets anywhere from £10.00 to £50.00 for them depending on the the framing style and home printed materials he includes with them. The real ones? Just £19.95.
To be fair I felt it was only right to contact the seller for there side of the story so I emailed them with this message.

I received this today and it is fairly clear
that it is unlicensed and is clearly a cast of the Termight
Replicas licensed badge and looks nothing like the
ones used in the film. To be honest I am really
not very impressed with it or the home printed and
laminated inserts. It looks like the most
expensive part of this was the frame. It is not
what was advertised in the listing.

The responce was as you can imagine less than stellar, he said and I quote:

hi it is a £9.99 prop badge in frame , i do not know wat you thort it was ??, so send it back for a refund, i have a buyer for it, sorry you are not happy ,

Just wow, what can I say I may have my moments of poor spelling and grammar but this is just… wow…

Clearly we are not sending the item back when he has the full intention of trying to sell it on again. I will be sending it to Termight who would like to have a look at it and see what this gentleman has been up to.

Another Fake Mr Bond...

Of course if you look at his other items you will start to see a lot of fakes, including this next very disturbing Bond item

This is as unlicensed as it gets, a fake golden gun AND a fake Rittenhouse Archives A9 40th Anniversary Christopher Lee autograph card. The card is a fake and he clearly says so in his listing

Christopher Lee FAKE

and the gun is unlicensed because Factory Entertainment hold the rights to produce these replicas and they are only taking pre orders at the moment. The last one of these he sold went for more than £50.00.

I was interested to see what ebay would say about this so I called them to try and report these items and talk about what could be done.  You may have already guessed but ebay didn’t want to know, they told me to open a dispute with the seller on the item I had purchased but the other items were nothing really to do with me and they couldn’t discuss them.  I was told

“In the first instance you must open a dispute, and give the seller up to 10 days to respond”

Meanwhile more of the items are listed and sold and seemingly no one is bothered.  Both Termight and Factory Entertainment have been informed and are going to be taking action even if its just to lodge a complaint with VeRO. Rittenhouse Archives have yet to respond.

Be careful what you buy and who you buy it from, this stuff in particular is fairly low quality, and someone is losing money.

That’s been tweaked a little so now so you will also be getting an additional two rare promo cards and the basic set is now a full 72 cards rather than the 50. The artists available in the set are Clayton McCormack, Stacey G, Don Pedicini Jr, David Desbois, Bill Pulkovski, MO, and Thanh Bui. These example photos show a selection from the artists and the quality seems very high.

The price has been confirmed as just $35.00 and a production run of just 400 packs. This is almost certainly going to sell out at the show, but I understand a very limited number of these may be held and offered to those unable to attend, that’s not guaranteed at this stage but it remains a possibility.

In addition to this offer Factory are also going to have a much more limited set of prop cards from the Prisoner Miniseries. This set will be limited to just 200, making it very hard to find indeed. The set is comprised of five cards (examples posted in the photo), and my understanding id that this will be the only time these cards are offered for sale. The price tag on these stands at $30.00 which when you consider that’s $6.00 per card seems very reasonable indeed. For those lucky enough to attend SDCC it looks like its going to be a good year.

As always you can discuss this on the Non Sports Update forum, a thread has already been started here

Prisoner Vol 2 Box

as you can see is 24 packs 6 cards per pack. The stats you need to know on set composition are as follows: It’s a 50 card basic set, two 6 card foils chase sets, 6 autographs*, 6 costume cards, 2 rare promos and many sketch cards. Your odds are Autos 1:24 Promos 1:24 Costumes 1:24 Foils 1:12 and sketch cards 1:34

Your looking at 2 or 3 hits per box more if you count the promo cards which are P1 and P2. These are for the recent Prisoner re-imagined mini series. (and very nice they look as well). The odds mean you SHOULD get 4 foils, 1 costume, 1 promo, 1 auto and a sketch in every second box. No guaranty about a basic set in a box but I would expect one with it only being 50 cards.

Now before I get stuck into this set I want to talk a little bit about the work behind it. The fact is Vol 1 of this set came out way back in 2002 and was brought out by Cards Inc (later to be absorbed by Corgi International and then wound up) makes the fact that Vol 2 has ever seen the light of day all the more remarkable. The new set released by Factory Entertainment (which is run by the former owner Cards Inc) is 7 years late but moving fast. Heck this set even has some of the inserts originally created for the Cards Inc Vol. 2 set, you will notice that all the costume cards are labelled under the older companies name. This was obviously a something that has been in the works for a number of years and before the box is open it looks like it was worth the wait.

As you can see from this image

I opened the box and the first thing I found was a loose costume card on top of the packs, which was a nice surprise to say the least. As I have mentioned these are the original inserts produced for Cards Inc and as such the card stock is a little different.

Open Box

After removing this card you can see the packs, the next shot is a close up of the fronts and backs of these:

Nice looking packs, and you know what your getting. They will stand out in a retail setting. Splitting these was very easy and a lot of fun, the card quality is very good with the high gloss finish on the front and a good thickness. It should be noted that the cards come out of the packs in order, that is to say ordered from high numbers to low numbers but not consecutively, ie: you will not get cards 1,2,3,4,5,6 but you might get cards 4, 14, 22, 29, 34, and 48 in one pack and if you do they would come out in that order from front to back. It makes sorting the base cards MUCH easier. We are not sure if this is consistent over the whole print run but if it is it works well. Its also good to note that this set has kept the same basic layout and design from Volume 1, which I have no doubts will please collectors fortunate enough to have the first series. As you have seen we already had a costume card from the top of the box, I am not sure how often this happens but in this case it was not the only one, as I also found another costume card in a pack, it seems they come both ways so we beat the printed 1:24 odds by getting 2 in a 1 box. The foil cards look great and have a real shine to them they seem to be of a higher quality stock than the 2002 set. We received the right number of these (two card from each set) and a P1 Promo card as well:

*The autographs are a little bit different, the set has 6 signed cards, 5 new ones for Volume 2 (Bernie Williams, Christopher Benjamin, Fenella Fielding, Ian Rakoff, Peter Wyngarde) and one card left from the original set which is a real gem: Patrick McGoohan. Now that last card is only available in extremely limited numbers. 75 cards were left over for the cancelled Cards Inc set and they are falling into this product at a rate of one in every other case. Something else to keep in mind: Due to a printing error the autograph cards are numbered up to 7, with card 3 not being in the set at all. It has been said that this was literally a mistake and all the cards intended for the set are in it… that’s not to say at some future date they may not sneak in an exclusive to back fill the unintended gap. This sample box produced a very nice Fenella Fielding card which is great as she is a first time signer.

Fenella Fielding

We didnt find a sketch card in this box but truthfully it wasnt missed with all the other high end cards you really feel like you getting good value compared to many sets that have perhaps 1 good hit in a box. The idea that you could get a sketch AS WELL makes this a really top end product.

I want to talk a little about the base set as well.

Basic Set

This box produced one 50 card basic set, now I know some will cringe at this because other products can give you 2 or 3 sets per box but with such a limited release this is the smart way to go, it means the sets are hard to put together and the base sets are more interesting and valuable because of it. This should help maintain a stronger secondary market value on these sets in years to come. One of the biggest problems in recent nonsports history has been the erosion of the basic set. Many dealers simply toss them away or sell them for next to nothing, this set shows that not only can you have a product packed with inserts but you can also maintain the value of the basic cards at the same time. That makes this set one of the few worth picking up and hanging onto.  Below you can see everything that came out of the box in one shot!

All things considered this set is a real winner, it’s very limited (125 cases) and provides a lot of quality for a low price. I would suggest you look for them now before they are all gone. This product wasn’t solicited with Diamond so they may be hard to find, I would suggest contacting Factory Entertainment directly to enquire about purchasing them if your regular dealers cant obtain these cards.  As ever a discussion thread is open on the NSU forum located HERE

There will be a Prisoner package limited to just 400, and it will contain a 50 card set, and Ian McKellan Autograph card a McGoohan Gold Foil Autograph, and a sketch card. All for $39.99.. No doubt they will sell out at the show. That seems like a nice low price when you consider the limited nature of the product and the autograph card you have included. We are assuming this 50 card set is from the new show.

Ian's Signed Card

On top of that they may well have other promotional cards to hand out but no details on those yet. If your lucky enough to get to SDCC your in for a treat it would seem!

Another update about the forthcoming classic series 2 set: It has been delayed due to packaging issues but should now have a release date of May 6th

Yeah that’s a long and dull intro, but if you stick with me (which I hope you will) this might be interesting.

Recently the trading card market (both sports and non sports) has been going through what I can only really describe and a state of flux. A lot of things are changing in a short space of time, and that’s always news worthy, even if it’s not always a cause for concern. A lot of interesting things are going one, and they more they change the more it seems some of them stay the same. Many years ago in card history (Baseball card history at any rate) Topps was essentially the only kid on the block as far as mainstream Baseball cards, it put up a real real fight to stop others from entering the market. History has shown the market expanded greatly once it was eventually opened to competition however and Topps befitted greatly because of this.

Simply put competition leads to innovation, you have to work to make a better whatever, or else consumers will look at other products. A lack of competition leads to stagnation. From a manufacturers point of view why spend money on innovation when you already own the market? If people are going to buy the product they HAVE to buy yours.

But wait Jason I hear some of you saying… people will stop buying! Well yes and no often some companies (big well known companies who will remain nameless ~Cough~Marvel~Cough~) would like to lose customers. If you raise your prices you will probably lose some customers, on the flip side the customers who remain are paying more and making up the short fall… on top of that your costs go DOWN because you don’t have to print, pack and ship as much product… Is this cynical? Absolutely. Is it something actively considered by most companies? Again absolutely.

Competition can help put a stop to this sort of thing. Then again their can be valid arguments for exclusive deals, if you are protecting a market from over saturation for example. Lets take some entertainment examples, say Smallville , a popular show (though very niche when it started) and licensed to the now sadly departed Inkworks. Could the market have coped with another company producing cards on this show? Unlikely, had more cards been produced the market would very probably have been over saturated and it would have devalued the license and the property as a whole. No license holder wants a property associated with remaindered and generally unsold stock. It just looks bad. So in some cases exclusivity can be a benefit to a growing market, the question really becomes who judges the situations. That is something I think is best saved for another topic at another time. I would however say this:

Licensing is predominately about one thing and that is profit, which is fine as long as that profit is not derived at the detriment of the consumer. A good example of this: Harry Potter has official license trading cards, these are created by Art-Box for the hobby market and have proven to be very popular. Art-Box had an exclusive deal which as of last year has been altered. Now they have an exclusive US deal. In other parts of the world Panini have the rights to produce Potter cards of there own. Essentially the rights holders can sell the same license twice while stifling competition.

If the Harry Potter brand is suitable for more than one license then why wouldn’t it be suitable for competition? Simply put a license like this would be fine with competition but Time Warner can be paid twice for preventing it. I can only guess the second company might not pay Time Warner if they thought they had to produce a competitive product! Art-Box now are unable to export their cards to places like the UK (you know where Harry Potter was created) and the card collectors will be forced to buy on the grey market, which means higher prices for the consumer. The other option is to simply buy the mass market Panini product and forget about the hobby product. These options seem less than reasonable to the average collector, but from the finical standpoint of the manufacture and and licensor’s it’s a great way to milk your money.

Look at a company like Rittenhouse Archives, they export very little outside of the USA and Canada these days apparently because of the contracts they have to sign. Because of this markets are left devoid of any cards, often on subjects that would have sold well. How can this be a good thing for the consumer or the whole of the industry?

Worse still seems to be the growing inability to understand the market we are in. Some people think that by attempting to artificial control the market we can bring back some sort of pre eBay heyday of golden card joy. To put it simply this is utter crap. This is why I think Mike Anderson, Rodney Alsup, and the rest of Panini USA are not only wrong but extremely hypocritical.

Ok I am sure I lost some of you with that so I will give you the background and some links, oh and I will tell you who these folks are. Lets start with that one: Mike Anderson is the Senior Vice President for sales and marketing at Panini USA. He probably has his own parking space to go with that tittle, but I am guessing at that. Needless to say a mid-sized fish in a small pond. He has been working in cards for a long time so should really know better. Rodney Alsup is the Hobby Sales Director… probably a smaller office the parking space is anyone guess.

Panini have announced that they are completely changing the way the sell and distribute all of there products. They will be artificially helping small hobby shops to the detriment of non shop owning dealers and mid sized resellers. They also want the Internet distributors to go. Mike talks about Wholesalers and retailers:

“You are one, or you are the other,” Anderson said. “And never the twain shall meet.”

And if you are a retailer with some wholesale customers:

“Again, no warnings,’’ Alsup said. “They will be black-listed”

Wow ok so Panini not only want to control the production of there cards they want to control what you do with them once you have bought them that is IF they let you buy them. Oh and they are talking about setting a minimum price that there cards cant be sold below… This news was welcomed by a larger number of hobby shop owners… you know that’s hardly a shock, that’s like telling fish your pro water… what response do you expect? The rest of the market might have a few things to say about it however. It reeks of protectionism and it specifically targeting online resellers and wholesale distributors. Now this is the hypocritical part: (this comes directly from the BeckettBlog)

The Panini executives credited CEO Mark Warsop for the company’s renewed commitment to integrity in distribution and admitted that, prior to Panini’s purchase of the former Donruss/Playoff LP in early 2009, the company made distribution choices that were not in its or the industry’s best long-term interests. Some of those choices included selling significant a volume of new issues and closeouts to online retailers, and allowing certain wholesale distributors to develop and operate online retail businesses.

“We turned a blind eye toward those things, because, honestly, we had to. Our ownership needed the money, and we perpetuated the industry’s problem,” Anderson said. “But under Panini ownership, we work for a CEO who is allowing us to do what should’ve been done 10 years ago. We are well structured, well financed and committed to doing what is best for the brick-and-mortar stores who are the lifeblood of this hobby.”

Bricks and Mortar stores are important to the hobby but only as far as the market will support them.. this is akin to publishers saying we will not sell books to Amazon because they are harming the real Bricks and Mortar book shop… the life blood of the hobby is NOT a shop it is the collectors, the consumers who spend money on your price fixed products drive the hobby. The delivery method by which they obtain the cards is much less relevant and intervening to harm one method while propping up another is an anathema to free market economics. Card shops are NOT to big to fail. Don’t get me wrong I like card shops I think we should have more of them, and if enough people think like that we will, but putting folks out of the market to force people into card shops is not how this should work. Looks like that’s the way it will be however, at least if you want NBA or NFL cards because Panini have the exclusive rights… Licensing meets intentional market manipulation.

It seems like every time you see a loser you know its a consumer. Its also a little rude to in no uncertain terms say to distributors and online resellers yes you were OK when we needed the money but hey you can take a flying jump now that we have cash!

Obviously as a company they can chose who they sell to but they cant enforce price fixing. Nor do I think this will help them with the large segment of the hobby that shops on-line. Those retailers looking to grow and expand are also shut out…

What I find most amusing is the total lack of hobby support any of these companies have outside of the USA. Panini UK refuse to respond to ANY questions and Topps promised a response in January to questions about hobby support in developing markets like the UK. Still waiting….. years ago card companies opened up to competition and everyone benefited for a while, now we have returned to exclusivity, and very possible mediocrity. Its no longer a choice about whose cards should I buy it’s more a question of should I bother at all, and that’s not the way it should be. Go out an support the “hobby” by buying what you like from who you like and don’t let manufacturers tell you what is best. I wonder how happy Panini will be when this sort of decision hits the profits.

Also as you finish reading this that I only said it MIGHT be interesting, it wasn’t but hey you had fair warning. Still it could always be worse!

Upper Deck have stated that they will be releasing Basketball and Hockey on time according to SCU and this interesting tweet from Upper Deck regarding Hockey. Upper Deck are saying things are fine, but that’s far from true. I have to admit we may have misjudged the situation in the last Upper Deck post, because just 24 hours later we found out that according to Ed from SciFi Cards Upper Deck have cancelled the whole Marvel and DC Vs line of cards. This line is one that they had problems with for a while now and recently pulled the plug on free promotional packs that were to be issued on the annual Free Comic Book Day event held across the US. The amount of money they put into the promotion of this card gaming set means that pulling the plug at this late stage had to have a major finical impact.

The Upper Deck statement that sets are on time is interesting because it only appears to cover Hockey, giving no reassurance about other products and leading to speculation about the now late Iron Man 2 film tie in set. If the rumblings are right then this set may not be coming out at all. I have to stress the point that this is NOT proven information, it is information that is coming from multiple sources some more reliable than others. With the number and variety of sources we know something is going on, and we are trying to verify exactly what that is. None of these sources have commented on the Iron Man set specifically, it seems t be considered to be a side issue when compared to the sports sets potential release freeze, but the lack of an entertainment set could prove to be a disaster for the already on the ropes company. This may have something to do with the Upper Deck entertainment departments lack of resources, if my information is correct they have less than 5 members of staff left in the entertainment division. The staff layoffs are no secret and have been reported on several times.

What ever is going on Upper Deck are not doing well, they cant be when there own distributors are telling people hat they are out of the game. They may not be out just yet, but it looks increasingly like Upper Deck are on life support.

So I guess when I read a constant stream of commentary about how Upper Deck are going to go under and how they have nothing left well I just don’t think it’s true anymore. I mean sure I personally would like to see them shut down, they have behaved in ways that not only bend ethics but snap them, Upper Deck is a dishonest company with a corrupt CEO, this has been demonstrated time and time again, by wise and infinitely more literate people than myself. (read the card sharks book) Realistically however Upper Deck still have some major licenses in the stable. Marvel could be a real money spinner if used correctly. Upper Deck have already taken steps towards a restructure with the dismissal of so many staff and the cancellation of products and sets. So many on the web are saying Richard McWilliam should go but this only demonstrates the naivety of the writers. Richard IS Upper Deck, from the outset when he made them the first advance of $70,000.00 he has manoeuvred the company until it was under his total control. People need to remember this is not a publicly held company it is NOT answerable to anyone but the owner and that is Richard McWilliam. The Idea that someone else will take over is simply farcical, he can ride it into the ground (and he may well be doing that). He can in essence do what he likes.

Months ago when I started writing about Upper Deck and the scandals a lot of people said it was a blip and that they were a good company, staunchly defending them, yet as more and more dirty washing is aired in public from so many reliable sources the tide has begun to turn. In my experience most forums and areas of comment seem to be siding against Upper Deck, which is a big shift in public perception, and probably a fair one.

It’s fair to say that Upper Deck are almost out of the sports card market, which is unfortunate for the Upper Deck fans who just liked to buy the cards they made, however it’s not a massive surprise to those who follow the news. If you read sites like sports cards uncensored you might even think the golden age is ending, however if you do ever read that blog keep in mind the the author “Adam Gellman” also writes for the official Upper Deck blog so you know… no conflict of interests… The real concern in my opinion would be if Upper Deck decided to become a major player in Non Sports. You see even a wounded Upper Deck is more powerful than most any specialized Non Sports producer these days. Non Sports is a sleeping giant, and as more card sets make it into mainstream retail outlets (Twilight is just one example) more and more companies are waking up to this potential. I fear Upper Deck may well come into the entertainment market with the same morally bankrupt ethos it used in the sports market and irreparable harm our industry. With Marvel behind them they already have the momentum to start. Of course this is speculation they may have no real aim to enter Non Sports in a serious way, so only time will tell. Upper Deck are down but I don’t think they are out just yet.