Gambo and T_Wil1 Photopack

[pegasus27]

Originally Posted by okcochise

First, I am happy to see Merkle back and the culture change that has come with it. I was pretty worried there for a while that this thread would die.

I would also like to echo the sentiment below that Topps Vault does provide a lot of excitement for us all and that I would not want to endanger our access to those images.

With that being said and to respond to the reposts; is there really any point to posting any of them here? I mean we all pretty much go there and grab the images. Now here lately, there seems to be a race in posting them. I dunno.... unless we are asking for identification, I just wonder why any of them should be posted. Please, lets not lose this very fortunate privilege that we have.

Jeff

Ok. So I've been away awhile. What is "our" standing with the Topps Vault and what is the relationship with Merkle 923? I am just asking?

[pegasus27]

Originally Posted by tnfoto

I've started using Google Drive for all my file sharing. There's a bit of a learning curve but after that it's reliable and easy to use. Their free version offers 15GB of storage which should be enough to at least get you started.

I have a google drive free account. Unfortunately it has 14gb of other research on it and you can only have one per computer. But it seems by some information that I got by PM that I have made all the previous files available so I guess it's not needed.

[Cusick]

This, and a number of other Keebler Rangers cards which follow, are being posted in response to a specific request which was sent to me in a private message. Included in the request was Connie Ryan, so I have posted his Keebler Rangers card on the managers thread at:
http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/boar...ml#post3819765

As I mentioned the first time I posted Keebler Rangers cards, some of these Rangers caps have been air brushed, so there's no guarantee that all of these cards show actual Rangers uniforms.

[Cusick]

The Keebler Rangers card for Jan Dukes.

[Cusick]

The Keebler Rangers card for Don Carman.

[Cusick]

The Keebler Rangers card for Don Kainer.

[Cusick]

The Keebler Rangers card for Greg Pryor.

[Cusick]

The Keebler Rangers card for Mike Marshall.

[Cusick]

The Keebler Rangers card for Bob Malloy.

[banosd]

Originally Posted by pegasus27

I have a google drive free account. Unfortunately it has 14gb of other research on it and you can only have one per computer. But it seems by some information that I got by PM that I have made all the previous files available so I guess it's not needed.

Pegasus,

You can get 100GB for two years with a free One Drive account

Get 100 GB of online storage free for 2 years

[okcochise]

A new update has been completed with close to 700 cards. Additionally, I updated all of the season zips which include all the previous updates.Game Front

Enjoy, Jeff

[Merkle923]

Pegasus, my relationship to Topps is historical consultant and a kind of unofficial liaison between them and the baseball history/baseball photography communities. I've spent a long time convincing them to take a blase attitude towards what they view as their implicit copyright on all their images, and I've generally be successful. They've come around to the view that the posting of the watermarked images serves as advertising for their product, especially their eBay business.

So anything with a watermark is fair game. The other stuff gets dicey. It's basically a question of volume and use. If they're "out" as your non-watermarked images from '06 would be, they could make a stink but won't. Posting of stuff obtained via Topps Vault or scrubbed of the watermark is the issue. I've talked them back from zero tolerance to "don't over do it." Their real problems are with the posting of unwatermarked Topps images of players whose photos could make money for some Internet rando who comes here and picks off the Koufax you posted, or the unwatermarked images posted in the design of actual Topps cards.

There's no hard and fast rule. The best advice is, less is better.

Speaking of which, here is a TV of Jay Kleven, who spent about two weeks as a backup catcher for the '76 Mets and appears in today's Vault upload:

[ortforshort]

Originally Posted by Merkle923

Pegasus, my relationship to Topps is historical consultant and a kind of unofficial liaison between them and the baseball history/baseball photography communities. I've spent a long time convincing them to take a blase attitude towards what they view as their implicit copyright on all their images, and I've generally be successful. They've come around to the view that the posting of the watermarked images serves as advertising for their product, especially their eBay business.

So anything with a watermark is fair game. The other stuff gets dicey. It's basically a question of volume and use. If they're "out" as your non-watermarked images from '06 would be, they could make a stink but won't. Posting of stuff obtained via Topps Vault or scrubbed of the watermark is the issue. I've talked them back from zero tolerance to "don't over do it." Their real problems are with the posting of unwatermarked Topps images of players whose photos could make money for some Internet rando who comes here and picks off the Koufax you posted, or the unwatermarked images posted in the design of actual Topps cards.

There's no hard and fast rule. The best advice is, less is better.

Speaking of which, here is a TV of Jay Kleven, who spent about two weeks as a backup catcher for the '76 Mets and appears in today's Vault upload:

Merkle,
Here's my take on your comments.
Please point out where you think I'm wrong.

Unclear to me why anyone is posting these watermarked Topps photos.
Doesn't anyone notice that there's this big, ugly watermark on the photo that ruins it?
Presumably that's the idea of the watermark - to ruin the photo.

As far as the value of photos that never had the watermark or had the watermark "scrubbed" - there is virtually no value.
Digital images have no value.
If they did, Topps would be selling them.
As a matter of fact, the people posting them here would be selling them rather than posting them for nothing.

In fact, even 8x10 glossies have very little value.
They mainly sell to get autographs put on them.
And their value is little more, if anything, than the cost of materials and shipping and handling.
Since most of the guys whose pictures are being posted here are dead, you probably couldn't give away most of the 8x10 glossies of these guys let alone digital images of them.
Topps tried selling digital photos and got nowhere.

The stuff Topps is selling is artifacts.
Autographed photos (the autograph gives them the value), orginal negatives, color slides with Certificates of Authenticity..
Digital photos, whether the watermark is on them or not, doesn't impct the value of these artifacts
Topps isn't selling photos that are not artifacts, no one is buying them that way.

That leaves card sets.
Topps already sold card sets of these players forty or fifty years ago.
These pictures were the discards, the ones that didn't make it into the sets.
Topps hasn't made any more card sets of these guys because there are no buyers.
Card sets of current players are a hard sell right now let alone let alone cards of guys from forty or fifty years ago.
Also, it's doubtful that anyone else is going to try to sell card sets of these old guys because, let's face it, if Topps figures it can't turn a buck on them, why would someone else even try.
If Topps thought they could turn a buck on making card sets out of these pictures, they would have done it. It's been fifty years, if they could make money off of it, they would have made the sets by now.

Therefore, based on the above, how is Topps losing money by anyone posting digital pictures of their stuff, watermarked or unwatermarked.
You could make a case for it actually being a selling point for the artifacts that they're selling that someone is actually bothering to make old Topps fascimile cards out of them - it shows that folks still have interest in these old pictures to some degree.

There's also one other thing. The folks who were alive back then were expecting to see these pictures made into cards. The photographers, the players, the owners of the company back then. They were taking the pictures to make cards for millions of kids - not for a few rich old guys who can plunk down $40 a pop for these things. Also, back then, the folks were actually involved in the taking of the pictures (players, photographers, owners) had no expectation that their progeny would ever be able to restrict their use later on. Copyright laws were only fifteen years back then, not the Draconian seventy five years that the Regan administration foisted on us in the Eighties in his role as the ultimate reverse Robin Hood (stealing from the masses and giving to the rich).

[Merkle923]

Throughout.

Topps not only sells their old images as collectibles, but they sell everything from retro card sets to wall art to prints online. It's not exactly a profit maker that rivals each year's primary card series - but they're making money off of prints of old Carlton Fisk negatives.

Closer to home, I've seen images I've posted here, with and without watermarks, later reposted here as autographed photos within weeks.

More encouragingly I've seen these watermarked photos reposted here within weeks as really nicely done "cards that never were" - and the watermarks provide a kind of counterintuitive authenticity to the effort.

As to copyrights, argue whatever you want about how it should be. The way it is, creators of content have copyrights and often have lawyers and if you want to use the stuff that comes with the former in a way that annoys the latter, you should be prepared to see whole pages of this thread erased.

Or you can just skip the posts you're not interested in, and not assume that your opinion is a universal.

[pegasus27]

Originally Posted by Merkle923

Pegasus, my relationship to Topps is historical consultant and a kind of unofficial liaison between them and the baseball history/baseball photography communities. I've spent a long time convincing them to take a blase attitude towards what they view as their implicit copyright on all their images, and I've generally be successful. They've come around to the view that the posting of the watermarked images serves as advertising for their product, especially their eBay business.

So anything with a watermark is fair game. The other stuff gets dicey. It's basically a question of volume and use. If they're "out" as your non-watermarked images from '06 would be, they could make a stink but won't. Posting of stuff obtained via Topps Vault or scrubbed of the watermark is the issue. I've talked them back from zero tolerance to "don't over do it." Their real problems are with the posting of unwatermarked Topps images of players whose photos could make money for some Internet rando who comes here and picks off the Koufax you posted, or the unwatermarked images posted in the design of actual Topps cards.

There's no hard and fast rule. The best advice is, less is better.

Speaking of which, here is a TV of Jay Kleven, who spent about two weeks as a backup catcher for the '76 Mets and appears in today's Vault upload:

Thanks for taking the time to explain. I play a different game than the host site sells (so I won't mention it) and I create(d) photo packs for that game and while searching the internet I found the EBay site almost ten years ago. I actually don't use the whole photo. I usually crop the photo to a 180x270 head shot. I have posted these photo packs for free for users of that game. In the process I met many of the fine gentlemen on this site and we started trading lists and posting pics for historical value and as part of our general interest in baseball history.I have never sold any photos nor will I ever and I have always kept the sharing to those that have a use for the pics for their gaming or historical value. And by the time I send a photo is has been cropped to a 180 x 270 which doesn't have any value to anyone.

I appreciate Topps position and will respect their wishes but it seems to me that their position is people can use the photos as long as they keep it low key and aren't using it for profit. Correct me if I am wrong.

An example of what a pic that I have gotten a hold of and cropped is the Jackie Brown that I have loaded off of a recent post in this thread and that I have attached.

The real question I would like answered is that apparently there is a website where this images are posted? Is there a link to this site where I could discretely view the photos and quietly use them?

Rick

[Merkle923]

And I might add that often some of the guys shown in the Topps Vault uploads are so seldom seen that a simple cropping makes a usable photo - as in the case of this obscure Hawaiian reliever from the Angels and Padres.

[Merkle923]

Went to Japan, then back to the Padres - only eight games pitched in his career.

[Amazin69]

Appreciate the clarifications recently posted.

As for pegasus27's thought that "we all go there and grab them, why post them here?", well, "we" aren't generally that monolithic. Life gets in the way. And there's a lot of stuff to sort through there, it's good to have the new images posted, particularly if there's detective work involved in IDing the subject and not everyone can recognize Jay Kleven right off of the bat. Or heck, if it's just a nice picture. (Which it is. I see Jay died young, at age 59 in '09. Hope he enjoyed those two weeks in the show, where he got into exactly two games.)

And I definitely vote for making those older photos available; I would love to have them. Obviously nobody should be stupid enough to try and steal from Topps by making a cheap buck, but I would hope that a) none of us would do that and b) the possibility of having to prosecute some hypothetical future malefactor wouldn't impede the accessibility of the materials to responsible people.

Okay, that's my Back to business.

I've attended exactly one spring training camp in my life, the Angels camp in 1980, when they still trained in Palm Springs and my grandparents were wintering there. Also in attendance was outfielder Gil Kubski, later a successful scout. He had a few minor league cards made, but there's nothing of him in Angels garb currently on the Google Images, so…




(With a skoshe of brightening and color tweaking, as I tend to do. Enjoy.)

[ortforshort]

Originally Posted by Merkle923

Throughout.

Topps not only sells their old images as collectibles, but they sell everything from retro card sets to wall art to prints online. It's not exactly a profit maker that rivals each year's primary card series - but they're making money off of prints of old Carlton Fisk negatives.

Closer to home, I've seen images I've posted here, with and without watermarks, later reposted here as autographed photos within weeks.

More encouragingly I've seen these watermarked photos reposted here within weeks as really nicely done "cards that never were" - and the watermarks provide a kind of counterintuitive authenticity to the effort.

As to copyrights, argue whatever you want about how it should be. The way it is, creators of content have copyrights and often have lawyers and if you want to use the stuff that comes with the former in a way that annoys the latter, you should be prepared to see whole pages of this thread erased.

Or you can just skip the posts you're not interested in, and not assume that your opinion is a universal.

I'm not talking about the legality of the postings on this site. I would venture to say pretty much everything anybody posts here is counter to the copyright laws, Draconian as they are.

I'm talking about the damages. If they're not making anything worth while on these pictures, why would they bother suing? Particularly since this web site pays homage to the company, not slander it or try to make money off of it that would hurt Topps earnings in any way.

Since you have put yourself in the position of being judge and jury over what gets posted here and have now put a damper over multiple postings, I'd like to see you do your homework a bit better. What will Topps sue over and what won't it? And, for that matter, all of the non-Topps postings, which are also just as afoul of the copyright laws, it seems like anything is allowed for those. This is all looking very arbitrary, but not by an actual arbiter.

[ortforshort]

Originally Posted by pegasus27

Thanks for taking the time to explain. I play a different game than the host site sells (so I won't mention it) and I create(d) photo packs for that game and while searching the internet I found the EBay site almost ten years ago. I actually don't use the whole photo. I usually crop the photo to a 180x270 head shot. I have posted these photo packs for free for users of that game. In the process I met many of the fine gentlemen on this site and we started trading lists and posting pics for historical value and as part of our general interest in baseball history.I have never sold any photos nor will I ever and I have always kept the sharing to those that have a use for the pics for their gaming or historical value. And by the time I send a photo is has been cropped to a 180 x 270 which doesn't have any value to anyone.

I appreciate Topps position and will respect their wishes but it seems to me that their position is people can use the photos as long as they keep it low key and aren't using it for profit. Correct me if I am wrong.

An example of what a pic that I have gotten a hold of and cropped is the Jackie Brown that I have loaded off of a recent post in this thread and that I have attached.

The real question I would like answered is that apparently there is a website where this images are posted? Is there a link to this site where I could discretely view the photos and quietly use them?

Rick

I know I'm beating a dead horse here, but what the hay (so to speak).
I was looking forward to your pics, especially since you had a lot without watermarks. Too bad for all of us.

Merkle scared you off.
Notice that Merkle's still posting tho'.
Apparently his posts are OK, the rest of ours are subject to the bogeyman possibly getting us