Hi guys,

I've revised my old Hannibal project and now that I have more free time I want to revisit this.

How would I approach getting a license and running with this?

Would anyone be able to give me a rough estimate for what sort of fees to expect? I.e. show license costs + actor fees?

if anyone could give any pointers or suggestions that would be great.

As you can guess - Nobody knows!

But that is why we collect and don't produce cards - I assume you would need to find out who holds the copyright for the item you want to produce cards for and see if they will give a licence - as for fees I suppose it could be £1000's or £100,000's and then you would have to approach each actor to see if they will sign and how much they would charge. I don't think we often appreciate just how much goes into a card set.

Right, nobody knows and nobody wants to discourage you, but to get a licensed card product without having experience in the industry would be something else. To compound that, you have a cancelled show with no incentive for participation by the studio or actors.

Maybe you could pursue just a fan based project for yourself if Hannibal is your main interest. Or maybe you could try to contact existing card manufacturers if you would like to make a career out of it. Lots of luck.

A number of small press companies have put out licensed products, it certainly can be done.

I'd suggest reaching out to some of those people for advice. Generally the non-sport crowd is very helpful. These guys can generally be found on Facebook or potentially at shows.

Hannibal seems like a 'Breygent' set. I wouldn't consider Bregent small press by any means, but they have put out some fantastic sets. If you could get some advice from them that would be a great place to start.

RRParks is working on several licensed sets, he seems to be on here from time to time.

The Viceroy team was working on a licensed set at one point, although I don't think it has come to fruition yet, but I do think they did some licensing research.

Kurt from Monsterwax also I believe has done licensed sets, but his work may be more public domain.

A lot of people use sidekick labs or versacolor for printing. They may be able to help you with the printing aspects.

Nate (Sad Littles/Sketch Card Studio) did some licensed sets as well. I believe he's retired from publishing, but he may be able to help.

Marty from Island Dreams has produced a bunch of sets with many different options. I don't think he's done anything licensed. . .

I think your best option is to reach out to someone who is doing it or who has done it and see where it goes. Some of the publishers may also be able to help you get into contact with the right people. . .

Good luck -- the more cards the better!

As it's been said this would run from 1000's to 100,000's and would need (unless you have deep pockets) financial backers to get up and running.

There's no reason why you couldn't do this, nothing's impossible. It's a very ambitious project but there's a lot of potentially costly considerations to take into account.

Before licensing and actor fees start with setting up a manufacturing company at least in name via whatever the legal channels are in the country you're based in. This would be the first costs.

Then think about financial backing. Draw up a plan for the cost of setting up the company, market research (demographic, supply/demand, industry competition etc), designing the product, manufacturing, distribution, promotion, licensing, fees for people associated with the company and/or project eg lawyer fees, actor fees, staff etc.

Alternatively you could do what a lot of people do here (mostly for free or reasonably cheap) and share your designs of favourite shows. Many people even send their cards off to be autographed and have built up incredible unique collections.

A very different ball game to manufacturing a licenced set of an existing show for Non Sport fans to purchase. Excited for the prospects this holds. Best of luck.

I just thought have you considered doing a fan funded start up? One of those pages where fans can donate at different tier prices to make the project happen? I know it worked for an independent video games company a few years back. Helped them secure a licence to make the Friday 13th video game.

Check out this company, they seem to do the kind of thing you're aiming for. Might want to drop them a line about specific questions? Could help. http://rrparkscards.com/about_us