Now they have Lost trading card patches on ebay . How does ebay allow cards like that to be sold on thier site ? Correct me if i am wrong but Inkworks then Rittenhouse had the licence for Lost ? I will not post the auction # due to not wanting to get in trouble on the forums but.. Stuff like this just isn't right in my point of view . Am i wrong here ? People that don't know better may spend major money on them.

quote:

Originally posted by Stargaterules:
Now they have Lost trading card patches on ebay . How does ebay allow cards like that to be sold on thier site ? Correct me if i am wrong but Inkworks then Rittenhouse had the licence for Lost ? I will not post the auction # due to not wanting to get in trouble on the forums but.. Stuff like this just isn't right in my point of view . Am i wrong here ? People that don't know better may spend major money on them.

just seen, they don't even match the color of the clothes on the image, looks like they are pasted on the card just like that
about 20+ different and they sell well it seems around 20$ each...

quote:

Originally posted by Stargaterules:
Now they have Lost trading card patches on ebay . How does ebay allow cards like that to be sold on thier site ?

All eBay are concerned with are the listing and final value fees for items listed on their various sites. They do little or no direct policing of what is posted there. They will generally only pull auctions if someone brings an infringement of their own listing rules to their attention or the rights holders contact them and ask them to pull the listings. Sad but true.

Unlicensed costume/prop cards are all the rage now it seems. . . I wrote about it on webjon.com a few of weeks ago.

The sad thing is that some of these are selling for considerable money -- one Spider-Man card I watched sold for over $100.

I am curious about this. I can see actually calling a card a LOST trading card would be a copyright violation, but would it be wrong to indicate on the card that the item was worn by so-and-so on episode blah-blah from the show LOST. This was what probably bothered me most about Pop Century's Wardrobe cards. You had no idea what they were from.

Unlicensed cards are a problem to the industry because someone is making a profit off of copyrighted images and titles for which a legimate company had to purchase an expensive license, and because some collectors are being deceived into thinking that these cheaply made cards may be worth something more than their original price some day.

Unlicensed cards are, at best, novelity items and they will never increase in value because they have no copyright and can be reproduced in infinite numbers by some fly-by-night source for as long as they will sell. When autographs or costumes get into the mix there is no assurance that any of it is authentic and it most likely isn't.

Unlicensed cards should not be confused with any product which is produced under personal agreements with the celebrities and does not infringe on any image or title on which someone else holds a copyright.

Having said all that, is it the general public's responsibility to get unlicensed cards off eBay?

I think not, although you can certainly try to make a complaint, if anybody will listen. Its the copyright owner's license that is being infringed on and its their profits that are being lost. Yet they don't seem to care enough to try to stop it. These are public sales for all to see, if Card Talk members can easily find them, why can't the manufacturers and studios? Disney and Marvel take a very hard line when it comes to their characters and you don't see their licenses violated very often because of it.

As for the buyers, unless the sale is total deception, knowledgable collectors should be staying away from this stuff. If people wouldn't buy it there would be no market for it and that would be that. Clearly someone is buying it, and if they are doing it knowing that its unlicensed, well that is their own responsibility too and they are getting junk for it.

Sorry to sound so jaded about this, but I don't like unlicensed cards and they keep turning up unabated despite these discussions and alerts. I can only conclude that the industry as a whole, and a portion of the collecting public, is not serious about stopping it.

Webjon : Very good write up thanks , Just a scary part of collecting . Newer collectores buy a few of those then find out about it being fake . That could turn people off to the hobby . I for one always have read up n the manufacturing website(s) and of course NSU before buying anything . I think the hard part of going after some of them , They are out of the US .
:Chuck Bartowski : Still love the name and thank you for the Holly Marie Combs auto and extras . <I agree that it would be but maybe hard to track down the people doing it even though it has a copyright .>
Once again wasnt trying to cause problems , Just wanted other peoples views since i am just about the only collector in my neck of the woods that i know.

If someone notified Rittenhouse about the LOST auctions, it could contact eBay to pull the listings.

This guy is dodgy as - sticking swatches onto Inkworks base sets - it's ridiculous. I'm now wondering if the costumes are actually genuine and purchased during the LOST auctions, because they cost a lot of money and I can't see how he'd make that money back with these slapdash costume cards.

Well based on him having the COA's I would think they were, but I guess you could find a piece of clothing that came close to matching the original costume and cut it up and say it is from the auction. I own 6 costumes from the show, and I know I would NEVER give out scans of my COA's to anyone, and I have had people ask before.

Assuming these are genuine, he's still going to make a profit. I looked up a couple auction numbers and the prices he would have bought them for. One Lost auction lot went for $750, the other $650. The minimum bid on this guy's auctions is about $20, so for any given clothing item, he has to only sell about 40 cards to break even. I can tell he's using the same wardrobe item on several cards, so I don't see why he won't break even or turn a profit.

And as for Rittenhouse being able to do anything about it - he's not really producing anything new, just taking two items and gluing them together.

Would I buy one? Never. But since people are buying the cards, he'll keep making them.

Just had a look at these cards and they look very shoddy to say the least. Amazing people would spend money on them.

As to why any company might not stop the licence infringement, it reminds me of some of the responses from watch companies who do not pursue the makers of knock-offs. They simply say that they are aware of the situation but they don't waste their time, money and resources chasing after the counterfeiters because if they shut one done another will pop up as there will always be demand for the cheaper 'alternative'.

Of course the situation is a bit different with these Lost cards as it has the look of a one-man-band operation with a very limited appeal so maybe is not a massive problem in the grand scheme of things. That said, I imagine a Vero alert to eBay from a manufacturer would get all infringing listings pulled in no time at all.
As an example, amongst the film poster collecting circles 20th Century Fox are notorious on eBay for stopping the sale of original movie posters for the films they distribute. They must have a man on the job trawling listings because most of the time (especially around new releases) if you have a 20thCFox poster for sale, Fox will put in a Vero alert and your're listing WILL get pulled. I don't know the ins and the outs of the Vero program but I think Rittenhouse should definately have look into these auctions.

Still, I don't think it's entirely fair to blame the licenced manufacturer for 'not protecting the consumer', that is not really their responsibility. As a James Bond fan I KNOW what cards are coming out/are available. I would expect the same knowledge from a fan of Star Trek, Star Wars, or LOST, and so on. Every consumer should give any purchase a good looking over and if you don't know about every single card, take some ownership and do a little googling, it's not hard to find the information on official products. Ignoring the people who may actually want these fake costume cards as some sort of novelty, anyone who does accidentally buy cards that look this bad have only themselves to blame.

quote:

Originally posted by X:
Every consumer should give any purchase a good looking over and if you don't know about every single card, take some ownership and do a little googling, it's not hard to find the information on official products.

If you are a new collector and aren't well aware of every manufacturer out there, how do you know which manufacturer is producing legitimate cards and which aren't? It's not like the unlicensed guys are advertising the fact that they are unlicensed.

I just had to look this up for myself and pretty much agree with the views posted above.
I believe there is very little that can be done about this growing issue in the non sport indstry and this is a very sad sign of the times.

-TC00.

quote:

Originally posted by webjon:

quote:

Originally posted by X:
Every consumer should give any purchase a good looking over and if you don't know about every single card, take some ownership and do a little googling, it's not hard to find the information on official products.

If you are a new collector and aren't well aware of every manufacturer out there, how do you know which manufacturer is producing legitimate cards and which aren't? It's not like the unlicensed guys are advertising the fact that they are unlicensed.

You don't need to know every manufacturer to be savvy. I can only speak for myself as a buyer... but if I come across a collectible I like the look of but know nothing about then, as I said, google is your friend. Trawl through some results and you'll piece the right information together. I wouldn't plonk down any amount of money for something I'd never heard of and the fact I would not want to potentially overpay is enough of an incentive to do some homework.

Also, the buyer could do something as simple as look at other eBay listings because common sense should highlight that the dodgy cards stand out from the authentic ones, if only because no-one else will be selling them. Regardless of what the unscrupulous seller does or does not say, legitimate sellers will be throwing about manufacturer names and the sets the cards come from, their rarity etc. When the dodgy seller doesn't list similar products or mention similar information the alarm bells should be ringing.

quote:

Originally posted by X:

quote:

Originally posted by webjon:

quote:

Originally posted by X:
Every consumer should give any purchase a good looking over and if you don't know about every single card, take some ownership and do a little googling, it's not hard to find the information on official products.

If you are a new collector and aren't well aware of every manufacturer out there, how do you know which manufacturer is producing legitimate cards and which aren't? It's not like the unlicensed guys are advertising the fact that they are unlicensed.

You don't need to know every manufacturer to be savvy. I can only speak for myself as a buyer... but if I come across a collectible I like the look of but know nothing about then, as I said, google is your friend. Trawl through some results and you'll piece the right information together. I wouldn't plonk down any amount of money for something I'd never heard of and the fact I would not want to potentially overpay is enough of an incentive to do some homework.

Also, the buyer could do something as simple as look at other eBay listings because common sense should highlight that the dodgy cards stand out from the authentic ones, if only because no-one else will be selling them. Regardless of what the unscrupulous seller does or does not say, legitimate sellers will be throwing about manufacturer names and the sets the cards come from, their rarity etc. When the dodgy seller doesn't list similar products or mention similar information the alarm bells should be ringing.

It sounds like you do more research that the average Twilight fan that sees an 'Autoprint' card for $30 and clicks to buy on impulse -- after all the seller has 100% positive feedback and has sold dozens of 'em.

While these costume cards are fairly obviously not legit, the autograph print cards are very well done, and if you didn't know they weren't legit you could easily be fooled by a scan.

It would be a lot easier to find this information via google if the manufacturers of the legitimate cards were pointing out on their own websites which cards were not legitimate.

These look like junk, IMO.

Beyond that, who holds the inkworks name now? I remember the issue with the "diamond edition 1/1" stamping, and on the surface this would be similair, if inkworks still existed.

In terms of licensed, it does seem to be becoming an obsolete idea almost in some people's minds. There's a couple Iron Man and Spider man one's I've seen labelled as being from one collector to another. Kind of like the people who sell negatives... Since they are labelled, I don't know that we have any more right to complain about that than we do about unlicensed artists drawing Iron man and Spider man sketches to sell without authorization. People on this forum sometimes openly brag about their acquisitions of these sketches. Art vs arts&crafts, not sure I see the difference. Unlicensed is unlicensed, sorry.

I can see these posing a problem with new collectors though. Getting burned leaves an unpleasant taste in your mouth, and if these cards look as bad in person at that price point... Maybe the people buying them are doing so for legal purposes to sue them or something?

LOST cards might be a bad example, since they pretty much exist as a real issue for all of these actors. I might be in for Primeval knock offs, or Dr. Who, or something which wouldn't otherwise be available though. I guess this was inevitable. There are official autographs, and then just commons or other cards signed by actors. There are sketches, and there are ACEO's. As I recall, the 90's also had unlicensed promo cards. Could costumes really be expected to be immune forever?

I'm not entirely sure where some of the Upper Deck and Razor Pop Century 2010 costumes would fit into this discussion, but as I recall there was some issue with one of the Americana sets, as someone was upset and suing for a fraudulent release or something as related to permissions required for making a costume card. Maybe the question is, does owning a costume give you the right to cut it up and stick it on things? Do you need permissions to identify who wore it? Or state where? It's my understanding that promotional materials are pretty much copyright free, because they are designed that way so that people can use them for reviews and such.

We might not like it, but there does seem to be alot of stuff going on in the hobby these days. --Chris

quote:

Originally posted by collector of things:
I'm not entirely sure where some of the Upper Deck and Razor Pop Century 2010 costumes would fit into this discussion, but as I recall there was some issue with one of the Americana sets, as someone was upset and suing for a fraudulent release or something as related to permissions required for making a costume card. Maybe the question is, does owning a costume give you the right to cut it up and stick it on things? Do you need permissions to identify who wore it? Or state where? --Chris

No doubt that license issues are skirted in these products that consist of random celebrity autographs and assorted wardrobe swatches. Same thing with the newly released Leaf Pop Century 2011. The card backs simply name the celebrity without any bio data, no reference to where a bit of material came from, no movies mentioned, no nothing. I guess that's one way to avoid claims of copyright infringement.

The funniest ones are the dual signatures because the cards don't indicate what's the connection between the two signers. A few are obvious, but I have seen so many on eBay where I have no idea why they put these two people on the same card.

quote:

Originally posted by Raven:
A few are obvious, but I have seen so many on eBay where I have no idea why they put these two people on the same card.

You don't remember Marlon Brando and Seth Rogan from that hilarious buddy comedy?

quote:

Originally posted by webjon:

quote:

Originally posted by X:

quote:

Originally posted by webjon:

quote:

Originally posted by X:
Every consumer should give any purchase a good looking over and if you don't know about every single card, take some ownership and do a little googling, it's not hard to find the information on official products.

If you are a new collector and aren't well aware of every manufacturer out there, how do you know which manufacturer is producing legitimate cards and which aren't? It's not like the unlicensed guys are advertising the fact that they are unlicensed.

You don't need to know every manufacturer to be savvy. I can only speak for myself as a buyer... but if I come across a collectible I like the look of but know nothing about then, as I said, google is your friend. Trawl through some results and you'll piece the right information together. I wouldn't plonk down any amount of money for something I'd never heard of and the fact I would not want to potentially overpay is enough of an incentive to do some homework.

Also, the buyer could do something as simple as look at other eBay listings because common sense should highlight that the dodgy cards stand out from the authentic ones, if only because no-one else will be selling them. Regardless of what the unscrupulous seller does or does not say, legitimate sellers will be throwing about manufacturer names and the sets the cards come from, their rarity etc. When the dodgy seller doesn't list similar products or mention similar information the alarm bells should be ringing.

It sounds like you do more research that the average Twilight fan that sees an 'Autoprint' card for $30 and clicks to buy on impulse -- after all the seller has 100% positive feedback and has sold dozens of 'em.

While these costume cards are fairly obviously not legit, the autograph print cards are very well done, and if you didn't know they weren't legit you could easily be fooled by a scan.

It would be a lot easier to find this information via google if the manufacturers of the legitimate cards were pointing out on their own websites which cards were not legitimate.

I probably do way too much research! An affliction of a life spent doing lots of research I imagine. Oh well... in my collection the 'worst' I have is one Bond promo probably cut from an uncut sheet but I knew this going into the purchase as I did lots of research! But no fake cards yet.

With regards to manufacturers pointing out illegitimate cards on their website, I think that would be too onorous a task and frankly a waste of their time and resources. I think it would be more useful to spend more time uploading images of their official cards to provide both better advertising and a reference point for what the cards should look like.

I don't mean to be dismissive of the issue but sometimes if people are too lazy to help themsleves then it can be good to get burnt. It's a hard lesson to learn when money is involved but you might think twice about that impulse buy next time.
Consumers need to take a bit of responsibility for their actions because in the age of the internet with a world of information at your fingertips what excuse is there? Additionally, we live in a world filled with unscrupulous people looking to take advantage of the uninformed or just plain stupid. Consumers really should know better. But if they aren't bothered about losing money then by all means throw it about without a care.