I was thinking pretty much the same, all are probably PD because nobody cared to file. For some reason I'm thinking the goudey rights were bought by another company? and they in turn may have bought some of the others back in the 30's. Maybe Topps or Bowman? Both were starting to get big around the time Goudey was winding down.
It would be amusing if any of them were still under copyright and Topps hadn't checked.
One thing I find interesting is that Treat used a 52 Mantle as a prize, and used the image on the boxes of junk that the prize might have been in.
And there are/were a few dealers using a 52 mantle pretty much as a logo -It was in the ads, but not advertised. Both those uses slid past unpunished, although treat may have licensed it.
I've found the new copyright extension frustrating, there's a lot of great stuff out there that got extended but has little to no commercial value so it's not released and likely won't be in my lifetime. There's also stuff I personally own that I don't technically have any rights to, but I own the only copy. Unfortunately nothing good enough that it's worth paying to figure out how to obtain rights. Like footage of the 72 olympic gymnastics taken by one of the competitors.
I've felt for some time that if a comercial entity won't market a copyrighted work like a movie or tv show or music it should be made public domain after a reasonable time -like maybe 20 years of no publicaton or broadcast instead of 95 years from publication. - Of course the flip side of that argument is groups like the Hendrix estate who do a fantastic job of releasing stuff that was only previously available as bootleg records, and truly making it a better product with proper attributions etc.
Steve B
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