New Helmar series--highly unusual--your thoughts?

[rats60]

Originally Posted by sirraffles

Your post is a long one. The original poster that complained about licensing collects 19th century photo cards. There is no evidence that any of those players received royalties. In fact, I doubt anybody here believes that they did. So that was his complaint and that is obviously problematic for him as he had just defined his own collection as being "Cinderella" cards (which he apparently despises). At this unhappy turn of self-inflicted events he complained that I had twisted his words. A small scuffle.

As for Wagner ... Wagner T206 had nothing in the slightest to do with my argument. However, I'll still mention that the story is just unproven speculation and I would think that many on this board are conflicted as to whether or not it is true. As far as I know, no endorsement contracts have been found for any of the big sets of the era, let alone (almost?) all of the small, regional sets that people like. That should lean us toward believing there was little to no licensing in effect unless otherwise proven. Please correct me if I am uninformed on the existence of card endorsement contracts. Even if they exist, however, it doesn't alter my point that many, perhaps even most, early cards did not bother with endorsements.

Per your point that Goudey, etc., carried copyrights: While I would lean toward the assumption that the Goudey brand paid an endorsement fee I personally do not know this for a fact. It seems unlikely that they paid Lajoie. In any case, a copyright mark was meant to guard against other manufacturers using the art and marks of the producer and had nothing at all do with their agreements (or lack thereof) with the players.

In any event, licensing has historically had nothing to do with defining whether a piece of printed matter is a card or not. To me, it is a silly question but interesting to see how logic gets tortured when arguing whether an object is a "legit card" or not.

Honus Wagner said it was true. What other evidence do you need? Are you saying that he was lying? Why then wasn't Wagner in every tobacco set if his permission wasn't needed? We also have a letter from John Gruber saying that he was given a contract by ATC to have Wagner to sign. Is he lying too? What are their motivations to lie about ATC wanting to pay Wagner to sign a licensing deal?

Why wasn't Ruth in the 34 Goudey set if his permission wasn't needed? Why would Goudey not pay Lajoie and print his his card and not pay Ruth and not print his card on the same 34 Goudey sheet? It makes no sense. Ruth was the biggest name in the game. Every company would have printed cards of him in every set if they weren't paying for player's rights. Common sense says that these companies only made cards of players who they had rights to.

Actually licensing historically has had a lot to do with what is considered a card. Certainly over the last 30 years. I have been at baseball card shows where dealers have been kicked out or told to remove items from their tables because they weren't licensed. You are making the claims that these cards were not licensed, it is up to you to prove your claims or at least present some evidence. You have given none.