Cult-Stuff

Cryptozoic Entertainment have been granted the license to produce the World of Warcraft Card game, this is the news that hit last night and has been picked up by a large number of other sites. I think granted is a massive stretch perhaps given is a little more likely when you consider that the aforementioned Cryptozoic Entertainment was founded by  Cory Jones from Blizzard (and Upper Deck before that)  and Ex DC comics and Wildstorm Exec John Nee. For those who don’t know Wildstorm was an independent comic company which is now a wholly owned subsidiary of DC comics.  Many sites are reporting that John is coming from Wildstorm, however in reality he resigned from DC in 2008. His history with large scale licenses and management may put the card game in reasonably safe hands, he is the CEO of the new company.

Cory Jones, now the new director of Entertainment on the other hand was also formerly Director of Brand and New Product Development with Upper Deck which is worrying. Anyone who was in the higher management levels of Upper Deck has ethical questions to answer. He worked on the initial product and then jumped to Blizzard, the license holders.  Now having set up this third company they have been handed the rights to WOW. Hopefully they will not let the fans down, but time will tell. At the time of publication the official web site is down http://www.cryptozoic.com/

Apparently Wrathgate Boosters will be out in May.

OK So we have a little while to wait (a month) before the updated Prisoner Vol 2 set hits the market but with the information released last week it’s shaping up to be a great set and with just 125 cases almost certainly a sell out product if it’s not already. With the addition of sketch cards and new autographs this set is also using some of the older Cards Inc stock that had been intended for the second set, a set they never produced. Specifically they will be using 6 costume cards and 75 Patrick McGoohan autographs, (that’s one in every other case). Now the set isn’t due out for another month (the last week in April) but you can see the costume cards now. As is often the case when a company is sold or wound up things slip through the cracks, and a some of these unreleased costume cards made it onto the market. Remembering that the Prisoner Vol 2 set had been cancelled it only seemed like a good thing that these cards came to the market rather than being hidden away in a dusty box some-place. At least they could be in the hands of collectors, which is, it could be argued, ultimately where they should be. No doubt a lot die hard Prisoner card fans have seen, and may own a set of these but I am sure a fair number of you have not.  Just to be clear: We nicked these images from auction listings.

Prisoner PV2 C1 Front

While it’s not known how many sets have been made available on the secondary market already it is a safe bet that the official release will drive demand up for these cards, which are due to be inserted at a rate of 1 per box.  In fact the hit rate on these boxes looks far better than most sets, you should be getting a sketch an autograph AND a costume in every box. It looks to be an outstanding value IF you can find a box!

As ever the discussion is ongoing at the NSU, and you should head over to talk about it. I will leave you with the updated promo sheet:

With world events what they are it seems the card collecting hobby is going to take a price hit. The price of wholesale paper and pulp has increased drastically in the last few months and now the prices are set to jump 8-12% in the next few weeks. These problems will hit the European market first and are caused in no small part by the Finnish port strikes and of course the Chile’s earthquake. Between them they account for almost 12% (source) of the worlds pulp sales, and the production mills have stopped running.

Already major card printers Cartamundi* have jumped on this sending out warning emails to all manufacturers stating  that they will be increasing prices. Apparently they will hold off until the end of the month one would guess they anticipate that this is when they will need to re-stock on paper, or it’s a good ploy to bump sales.

It looks like cards are about to get more expensive.

*Note: Cartamundi are printers under license and deal with the printing for many of the large manufacturers, including brands like Yu-GiOjh World of Warcraft Strictly Ink, Upper Deck, and several others.

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.