Origins of this card

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Posted By: JeepGuy63

Can anyone tell me the origins of this Griffey card - who made it? How rare? Worth?

Thanks!

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Posted By: Rob L

That's an interesting card. Some believe it is an alternate version of his Spirit card while others say it is a fake. It's more prevalent than the actual Spirit card.

Rob L

http://www.freewebs.com/loefflerrd/

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Posted By: Phil Garry

My guess is a fake.

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Posted By: jdrum

my guess is it is of "nefarious" origins. Most likely not authentic.

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Posted By: JeepGuy63

The border (and type) looks real like the card produced by the league (and Best?) but with nothing on the back as to who made it or where it came from.

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Posted By: William

I'm not a card collector anymore, so excuse my ignorance, but, what makes a card a fake? Is it simply being an unauthorized printing no matter how large the print run is?

These were all over the NE show circuit in 1989. I have one in my collection too. Probably paid $10 for it back then. You could have purchased hundreds of these at any given show back then. I don't recall there being any chatter about them being fakes, but I do recall there being a proliferation of fakes in general during that time frame. Those however, were usually replicas of desirable cards like the Clemens and Mattingly rookie cards. This Griffey card seems to be in a different category if fake.

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Posted By: Dan Bretta

Fake is the wrong word...unlicensed would be a better fit.

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Posted By: JeepGuy63

My thinking it was some kind of giveaway card and was trying to get any info on it as to where it might have come from, who printed it, etc.

I guess the "fake" comes in because there is no info as to who produced it on the back ... even Hostess or other premium giveaways had some kind of logo or maker info on them. This one has nothing other than baseball stats.

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Posted By: davidcycleback

The unlicensed cards are called Broders. Broders were typically made in the correct year, but there were no rights to make them and limits on production. For example, one 1969 Reggie Jackson Broder was actually made in 1969.

One problem with unlicensed cards is, if the player suddenly got popular, the maker could simply print more cards. On the other hand, if Topps or Fleer had a MLBPA (player's union) and MLB licenses to use player and team images, they weren't allowed to make any more cards at a later date. In fact, today's production runs may be set in the contracts. I know the MLBPA contract sets the number of different sets a company can issue in a year, and the union even reviews and okays the card designs.

Duly not that most 1970s-80s licensed Minor League team sets had a very limited production, as they were intended to for the hometown fans at the small town local ball park in Vermont, Iowa or wherever. They were typically issued in factory team sets and, as with the Star Co. NBA sets, today are commonly collected, bought and sold in the team set form. Though some collectors no doubt pull the Cal Ripken Jr and Don Mattingly singles for grading.

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Posted By: Jodi Birkholm

I remember Broders! I didn't know that they were called Broders outside of Canada. These were really big around the time the Griffey depicted above was issued (late 80's-early 90's).

Does anybody know how they got to be called "Broders"? There was obvioulsly more than one company printing these.

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Posted By: CS Bolay

The story I heard at the time was the guy who printed most of these unauthorized cards was named Broder. He eventually had to flee the country to escape lawsuits or whatnot.

Possibly a card shop urban legend, I really don't know...

Could be the nickname stuck and became sort of like 'Xerox' or 'Kleenex'...

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Posted By: Rob L

Here's the real team card:



Rob L

http://www.freewebs.com/loefflerrd/

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Posted By: David Smith

I don't know how much of the following story is true or if I remember it correctly but this is something a veteran collector, who I will not name, once told me.

Back in the mid 1980's, this veteran collector, who is an Attorney and Broder decided that they were going to start a company and sellbaseball cards.

The collector/Attorney drew up the legal documents and he and the other guy went to Spring Training and started taking photos of players. After they took all of their photos and had them developed, they had them cropped and then had cards made up.

When all of that was finished and their first set was done they went out and tried to sell them. They ran into trouble when no major retailer would accept the cards because they were afraid MLB and the Players Association would not like it and keep them from selling authorized cards made by Topps, Fleer and Donruss.

Having money tied up in this venture, the two guys started going to card shows and selling the sets and star cards.

A little after this, MLB and the Players Association DID find out and went after these two.

At first they were going to fight it but later decided it wasn't worth it. The collector/Attorney stashed the remainihg cards in storage. That is where I first saw them in the mid 1990's and that was where they were in the Summer of 2007 when I helped him clean out that storage area.

At that time, he had thousands of these cards left. I know I picked up a stack of Barry Bonds cards, which would have been either his Rookie or second year card and counted them. In that one stack, which was falling out of it's original clear plastic wrapping, there were 500 cards.

He said he had more Bonds cards left because at the shows in the 1980's, if the sets weren't selling then people were buying the star cards individually and Bonds wasn't a big name yet.

David

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Posted By: jdrum

Maybe fake is too harsh a word, perhaps an illegitimate or fantasy card would be better.

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Posted By: davidcycleback

Illegitimate is a good label.

There are some Pre-War cards that were similarly illegitimate-- such as a card that used a player's image without permission or payment.

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Posted By: Dan Bretta

Before the MLBPA I would have called them illegitimate, but I think Unlicensed fits better now (since 1969) since you have to have permission to use a ballplayer's likeness and/or team logo.

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Posted By: jdrum

Agreed.

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Posted By: Bob Lemke

The "white shirt" Berdoo Griffey is an unauthorized, unlicensed, fantasy card designed and sold strictly for the collector market, trading on the design of the legitimate team-issue.

Ed Broder was a U.S. Army lifer who knocked around Hawaii and the West Coast in the hobby scene beginning in the 1960s. He's as nice a guy as you'd want to meet, and enjoyed producing "collector's issue" cards as far back as the faux-1950s "PCL Popcorn Cards". By the mid-1980s, his son Rob took over the family business and created tons of unlicensed cards in all sports, often of a quality equal to or better than Topps, etc. He applied for MLB licensing in the late 1980s or early 1990s, and produced some semi-legit prototype cards, but never got the license.

"broder" has, as pointed out since joined the hobby lexicon as a generic name for unlicensed fantasy cards.

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Posted By: Jodi Birkholm

Thanks for that info Bob! Actually, now that you mention it, I do recall hearing some sort of Army connection way back when (perhaps 20 years ago). I have seen those PCL popcorn ("Seattle Popcorn"?) cards being sold on eBay for some time, and had no idea that they were manufactured by Broder. Again, thanks so much for the enlightenment. I'd love to hear any other info you may have on the subject.