Is your question of royalties supposed to be your zinger? The ultimate test of what is and what is not a card? Laughable. If you collect early photographic cards then you already know that virtually every one of the cards in your early collection did not pay royalties. Will you now get rid of them? We'll have to consider them illegitimate and I'm sure that you'd like to be consistent in your philosophy. Sadly they are fading into nothingness anyway. I wonder what a blank Cinderella card will sell for? In my case the families of the players are among the best customers that I have. Literally hundreds of family members have Helmar cards and consider them heirlooms. Regarding Lajoie: the fact also remains that he was retired, probably not paid, and was a "Cinderella" card as per your own tortured logic. It will come as a disappointment to many that it, along with thousands of others from the early days until the present, are not real cards. Your fear of new people buying Helmar cards and somehow being swindled is silly at best. Our cards often sell for more than vintage anyway. You make a decisive error if you are conflating our cards with reprints. I agree that reprints are a danger. Better that we all just look at nice pictures in books. Charles Mandel.
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