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Posted By: David

There is a difference between making and selling Ty Cobbs T-shirts and trading cards, and including a picture of a relevant T206 or Topps Mickey Mantle in an informational article, website or book. The former is trying to make money directly from Cobbs' image, and the later is larger work about an item. In a book, if an item is unique (like a painting or sculpture), credit is often given to the owner of the item who gave you an image of the item. (Unlike mine) most published books require highest-quality images for reproduction, so they often pay the owner of an item to provide the image. There's an upcoming book called 'The Complete Cubs,' that has 2-3 images of photos I own and the publisher paid me $200 each. This had nothing to do with copyright issues, as I don't own any copyrights on any Cubs photos, but was a service fee for me scanning, and providing the images.

If you plan on reprinting a T206 Cobb card or make a new Ty Cobb plush toy, you would have get permission and probably pay $ to Cobbs' representative (CMG).

If you have images on a web page, you have little to worry about. And if some entity or person feels there is a copyright violation, it/he will at worst just ask you to remove the image.

As a practical manner, I'm sure Topps loves collectors putting of personal websites talking about their favorite Topps cards. It's great advertising.