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# Thursday, June 25, 2009
Tell us about your first National Convention ...
Posted by T.S.

OConnell Sons.jpg
   I blogged yesterday about the coming National Convention in Cleveland, noting that every collector finds different things about the annual event that make the return to the next as inevitable as the arrival of the new cards every spring.
  
   I’d be interested in hearing the readers’ recollections of their first Nationals, or maybe their favorite ones, and would ask that they be sent to my Sports Collectors Digest e-mail address at: thomas.oconnell@fwmedia.com.
  
   I don’t recall if I even knew about the very first National in Los Angeles beforehand; I was newly married in the early 1980s and wasn’t exactly flush, so the idea of going to LA wouldn’t have even been on the radar screen. The next three were all in the Midwest (Detroit, St. Louis and Chicago), and while I knew about them beforehand from SCD, my job with the Empire State Games meant that there was no time off for much of anything during the summer months,
   But by 1984 I was no longer under the iron grip of New York State employment, I was living in Delaware and actively promoting my fledgling O’Connell & Son Ink mail-order business. Parsippany, N.J., sounded doable.
   I was already on Bob Schmierer’s waiting list for the famed EPSCC Philadelphia Show; I don’t recall if I tried to get my own National table or not. I might not have, since I already had an offer to share table space with a dealer from Florida. Believe it or not, I can’t remember the name of the company, despite the fact that I was extremely grateful that he had provided me the opportunity to get exposure for the O’Connell & Son Ink artwork.
  
   What a thrill! In the hours leading up to the show’s opening, I met a dozen or more of the hobby pioneers, guys I had only read about from their advertisements in the magazine-sized biweekly Sports Collectors Digest. Biweekly is one of my all-time favorite words, since it means either once every two weeks or twice a week. I would think that if you were talking about getting fed, or waterboarded, for example, it would be fairly important to try to figure out which definition was being employed.

   I do remember there were also a lot of auxiliary events taking place at the hotel in Parsippany, like seminars, exhibits (HOFer’s jerseys, the T206 Wagner, etc.) and even a Strat-O-Matic tournament, but once the show got going, I hardly got to go anywhere at all, because roughly half of the table was mine and I had to stay and man it.
  
   I remember I had constructed a giant wood display that held I think about 18 plastic frames (8-by-10) of the various prints I was selling at the time, along with the Baseball Greats set (shown) that was my initial entree into the hobby. I am to the art of fine woodworking as Pamela Anderson is to molecular biology, so that particular bit of plywood finery remains as perhaps my finest creation in that arena.

   In doing research after I finished this blog entry (I work in mysterious ways; most writers do the research before they hit the keyboard), I found the National Convention issue of SCD. I had a full-page ad in that Aug. 3, 1984 issue, and a “See You at the National” note included – along with the National logo – near the bottom of the page.
   Turns our, I was at Table B-22, along with The Baseball Card Stores of South Florida. Thanks for everything, even 25 years later.




Thursday, June 25, 2009 4:20:10 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)  #  Comments [0]
# Wednesday, June 24, 2009
National excitement is different but still very real ...
Posted by T.S.

Russell.jpg
   I had a neat interview the other day with Mike Berkus, one of the three co-managers of the National Sports Collectors Convention, and one of the elements that came through with great clarity was the reminder that the vast majority of the people involved at that level bring with them a genuine affection and commitment to the hobby.
  
   In the case of Berkus, easily one of the most articulate hobby spokesmen around, I was struck by the fact that despite the enormity of the National undertaking every summer, he remains a hobby guy at heart. Just like the rest of us, he longs for the anticipation and excitement that has always been a hallmark of the annual event, but unlike us, he’s in a position to have an impact on just how much buzz accompanies each show.
  
   I thought it was pretty cool when Berkus told me he spent about $3,000 on vintage cards the last time the National found itself at the I-X Center near the Cleveland airport two years ago. If you’ve ever seen Berkus (or co-managers John Broggi and Bob Wilke) during the five-day extravaganza, you’d understand how much of a true hobbyist he would have to be to find time to scout dealer tables during that stretch.
  
   In the interview, which will appear in the July 17 issue of Sports Collectors Digest and on the www.sportscollectorsdigest.com website, he waxed nostalgic about the passion for collecting that has always been present at the annual event, though he concedes that as each year passes it becomes more of a challenge to find ways to stoke those fires.
  
   This year, he points to the addition of a new manufacturer, Panini, to the corporate section, a nifty Pepsi Party of a Lifetime promotion and the usual anticipation that surrounds the dozens of cool promotional cards that the card companies create every year just for the show.
  
   And here’s a dollop from my end: the folks who produce the exotic Sportkings cards (shown here), which are modern versions that brilliantly capture the essence of the 1933 issue of the same name, will unveil their Series C in a couple of weeks in Cleveland.
  
   I’ll admit I’m biased, since their principal artist, Paul Madden, is a friend and frequent contributor to SCD, but I just love those cards and am looking forward to seeing the next batch.
  
   Much has changed in the hobby/industry in the three decades that the National Convention has been around, but one underlying thread runs through all those years: collectors find those parts of the hobby that tickle them each and every summer when the big show comes to town.




Wednesday, June 24, 2009 4:07:55 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)  #  Comments [0]
# Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Winners of the Auravison Records Drawing ...
Posted by T.S.

AuravisionSpahn.JPG
   A couple of months back when we ran a cool two-part feature on the 1960s Auravision Records, we included with the article a couple of paragraphs explaining how collectors could enter to win samples of the 1964 Auravision Records in a random drawing.

   Well, I am a little bit late doing the random drawing part, but better late than never. A number of readers sent in their entries for a chance to win any of the three prizes, and the winners picked out are as follows:

   First Prize (5 records: Rocky Colavito, Frank Robinson, Warren Spahn, Whitey Ford and Pete Ward) – John Wopershall of Youngstown, Ohio

   Second Prize (4 records: Jim Gentile, Ernie Banks, Ward and Robinson) – Jim Newsom of Virginia Beach, Va.

   Third Prize (3 records: Gentile, Ward and Banks) – John Maiorino of Woodhaven, N.Y.

   Congratulations to all three, and, as they say, thanks for playing. We also thank former major leaguer pitcher John Gray, who was featured in the two-part article about the Auravision Records, and donated the dozen records for the drawing.  




Tuesday, June 23, 2009 2:18:57 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)  #  Comments [0]
# Monday, June 22, 2009
New Hall of Fame Game sounds better than the old one ...
Posted by T.S.

Bob Feller.jpg  
   Did you ever have occasion where a situation was kinda forced on you for any number of reasons and it turns out that the “solution” was so cool that you wonder why you didn’t do things that way in the first place? I raise the hypothetical after reading the official press release from the inaugural Baseball Hall of Fame Classic in Cooperstown last weekend.
  
   This blog will poach in spots from the PR release (italics), the gist of which is that the new arrangement with having Hall of Famers and retired ballplayers square off for the exhibition game at Doubleday Field sounds like it should have been the way we were doing this all along.
   
   With 90-year-old Bob Feller (Hall of Fame Class of 1962) starting the game on the mound for Team Wagner, the 7,069 fans at Doubleday Field were treated to a Hall of Fame matchup right off the bat when Paul Molitor (HOF Class of 2004) came to the plate for Team Collins and singled to center.
 
   Hall of Famer Bob Feller delivers a pitch during Sunday’s Baseball Hall of Fame Classic in Cooperstown, N.Y. (Milo Stewart Jr./National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum)

   “We made a deal – he said no bunting and I told him I’d keep line drives out of the middle of the field,” Molitor said after his hit.
  
   Bobby Grich followed Molitor – and promptly brought the house down by half-heartedly charging the mound after a Feller offering came a little too close for comfort. From that point on, the laughter coming from the stands was just as prevalent as the cheers – as the players made sure the fans had a good time.
 

  The inaugural Hall of Fame Classic Weekend was presented by Ford Motor Company, and the game featured Hall of Famers Bob Feller, Fergie Jenkins, Paul Molitor, Phil Niekro and Brooks Robinson along with 21 former major leaguers.

   The new arrangement follows decades of having actual major league teams travel to Cooperstown for a mid-summer exhibition, but the difficulties of scheduling that annual game led the Hall officials to find an alternative. The last game under the old format, in 2008, was perhaps fittingly rained out.
 
   Feller left the game soon after facing Grich, signing autographs for fans – many of whom were not born when he threw his last major league pitch in 1956. But more than 50 years later, Feller’s legend remains larger than life.
 
   Team Collins scored two runs in the first on RBI singles by Steve Finley and Johnny Grubb, but Team Wagner escaped further damage when Hall of Fame pitcher Fergie Jenkins got Mike Timlin to hit into a double play started by 11-year-old surprise shortstop Zach D’Errico of Schenectady, N.Y.  D’Errico came to the game with his father, Rich, and was asked onto the field by Steve Lyons of Team Wagner.
 
   Team Collins added two more runs in the third on a Finley triple and a Kevin Maas home run. But in the bottom of the fifth, Team Wagner cut the deficit to 4-1 on an RBI double by former Reds’ slugger George Foster. The teams were named in honor of the team managers (Hall of Famers Eddie Collins and Honus Wagner) in a 1939 all-star game played in Cooperstown at the first Hall of Fame induction.

 
   Then in the bottom of the sixth, Team Wagner scored four runs on an RBI double by former Red Sox and Expos pitcher Bill Lee, an RBI groundout by military all-star Corey Davisson, an RBI single by Lyons and what proved to be the game-winning double by former Yankees third baseman Mike Pagliarulo.
 
   Lee Smith picked up the win by pitching the sixth inning for Team Wagner, and Rich Surhoff got the save. Lyons had three hits for Team Wagner, while Finley and Grubb had three hits apiece for Team Collins.
 
“The game was a success,” said Hall of Fame President Jeff Idelson. “We were happy to see everyone having a good time at the ballpark and connecting families as well as celebrating history today on Father’s Day. Not until next year’s Classic will that much talent be having that much fun on the dirt.”

   I’ve tried to cajole my Midwestern colleagues here in Wisconsin to take a sortie to Cooperstown, and the new tradition sounds like one more reason to continue hectoring them about it. It’s an idea whose time could have come years ago. Watching a game at Doubleday Field is as close as you’ll ever get to replicating Kevin Costner’s “Field of Dreams” euphoria from 20 years ago, followed closely by sitting in the Hall’s absolutely unique baseball theatre.

   I mean no disrespect to the modern players, but the Hall of Fame is just as much (maybe more) about the thousands of guys who came before as it is about them. It sounds to me like the “new” Hall of Fame Game may be even cooler than the old one.

   There. Who says I can never embrace new ideas?






Monday, June 22, 2009 3:18:32 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)  #  Comments [0]
# Thursday, June 18, 2009
With auction closing looming, this is exciting time ...
Posted by T.S.

WalterWEB.jpg 
   I used to have a job where the whole year’s work would distill down to the results of a four-day stretch in the middle of August and a week-long period in February. Fifty weeks of work all directed toward the doings that would take place in 11 days.
  
   That was when I was public relations coordinator for the Empire State Games in New York, and the 11 days, of course, were those involving the four days of the summer games in Syracuse and the week’s worth of the winter festivities in February in Lake Placid. For a guy who had worked primarily at a daily newspaper where you were expected to come up with tangible results literally every work day, gearing my efforts for two brief periods each year was a major change in the workday strategy.
  
  (Shown is original artwork of Walter Johnson by acclaimed artist Darryl Vlasak, one of three striking pieces he has consigned to the sale.)

 I mention this because we find ourselves this morning in a similar kind of situation with the closing of our first auction sometime this evening, or even better, sometime early tomorrow morning. I know that the pressures of business put considerable demands in terms of revenue generation and all that good stuff, but I find myself more taken with the inner workings of the auction business, which I have always found fascinating.
  
   I have always had enormous respect for the people who do auctions for a living – much as I do for card and memorabilia dealers – because I have a real feeling for how much is actually involved in doing all of those things successfully. Our sortie into the auction arena has only increased those feelings.
  
   In the same vein, the move into auctions also reminded me of something else from another point in my journalism career, maybe 20 years ago. I had been the editor of a weekly newspaper in Delaware for several years and was, for lack of a better expression, getting pretty burned out on the job. And out of the blue, we started developing our own black-and-white photography for the newspaper, and the process of adding that new skill and chance for creative new tinkering promptly revitalized me for a couple of more years.
  
   And no, I am not suggesting I am burned out as editor of Sports Collectors Digest, but merely noting that finding new avenues to learn and grown is important even in a job where the creative opportunities ought to be virtually unlimited.
  
   I had a lot of fun helping to write up the auction descriptions and I hope to have a bit of fun this evening manning the telephones. There’s some really cool stuff in this auction, and I’d like nothing better than to be running back and forth from the vault to the telephone to describe the centering or corners on this or that baseball card.
  
   I always really enjoyed the electricity that surrounded some of the early auctions I covered for SCD, and I’m hoping we’ll re-create some of that energy tonite.
  
   Because of the demands on getting SCD out the door on Friday morning, I probably won’t be able to do any blogging about the auction until the weekend or Monday morning. In the meantime, check it out by clicking on the auction button on the home page.
   And call me tonite if you have questions. As they say, operators will be standing by.




Thursday, June 18, 2009 3:04:52 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)  #  Comments [0]
# Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Sammy is guilty, but we have no right to know it ...
Posted by T.S.

SOSA.jpg   I have to confess I took a couple of days off for something as frivolous as golf, thus I have been remiss in keeping up my blog postings. I know there are countless individuals capable of handling something as pedestrian as that from virtually anywhere, but I ain’t one of them.
  
   Upon my return to the office, I see newspaper and online accounts of Sammy Sosa’s name being added to the ranks of those on that infamous 2003 list that indicates players who tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs.
  
   This comes about a week after Sammy’s unsolicited announcement that he was now officially retired and would calmly await his inevitable election to the Hall of Fame. Ahem.
   
   The timing may be coincidental, but if it is it’s one helluva coincidence. I don’t know about you, but I would like to know who this guy is who gets to sit back and decide: a) ballplayer A has said something annoying; so b) He gets to tie a can to his ass on the basis of Item A. That’s a lot of power for any individual, anonymous or not.

    The resulting uproar is as expected: outraged sanctimony, garnished with righteous indignation. Yipee!
   
   Me, I’m more interested in the aspect of all of this that is ongoing rather than that which is historical trivia. The List. I capitalize list, because I suspect that this particular list is going to become a proper noun fairly soon.
  
   Here’s the part I find so interesting: we wouldn’t know any of this if the players association hadn’t agreed to the 2003 testing, which hinged on the results being kept confidential. I can’t shake the suspicion that if this were actually some kind of legal proceeding, rather than an impromptu public stockade, all of the evidence would be summarily tossed out because of the way it was obtained.
  
   The reality is that the only reason the “evidence” even exists is because the players, through their association, agreed to the testing on the basis of that confidentiality. That ought to count for something, but it doesn’t really seem to in the court of public opinion, which seems to lap up every new revelation with an ardor and enthusiasm not unlike that which captivated the baseball world and the nation in 1998. It’s grand theatre, which is not quite the same thing as being right.
 
   And I’m not quibbling here. It was wrong for players to be using those substances in 2003, but my mother used to stress to me that two wrongs do not make a right. They shouldn’t have been using that stuff and it’s wrong that they did. It’s also wrong that we are going to torpedo them – apparently one at a time – on the basis of evidence that should never have seen the light of day.
  
   As a duly installed member of the public, I confess I have absolutely no moral or legal right to be privy to that information. Doesn’t matter who the other 102 names are, it is all data that is “fruit of the poisonous tree,” and should thusly be excluded.
   
   I will blog another time about the implications of the other 102 names dribbling out in the coming months/years. Or maybe the pressures will prompt some large disclosure en masse, or maybe somebody will get tired of having that particular sword hanging over his head and “confess.”
  
   No matter how it comes about, it ain’t right.




Wednesday, June 17, 2009 4:47:14 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)  #  Comments [0]
# Friday, June 12, 2009
The Great DiMaggio throws him a curveball
Posted by T.S.

Joe D.jpg
   (This is the third of three parts profiling noted photographer David Spindel, this time looking at his unique relationship with the legendary Joe DiMaggio.)

   Spindel also has a few artifacts left from another of his cronies, Joe DiMaggio, though not the item he wanted. “I wanted to get Joe to sign a boxing glove, but he wouldn’t do it,” Spindel recalled. Undaunted, the man The Yankee Clipper once described as “my personal photographer” in an introduction to another pretty fair country ballplayer, Ted Williams, arranged in 1989 to have DiMaggio visit his studio at a time when he was creating a huge still-life of his memorabilia.
  
   When Joe showed up at the studio, he had a couple of surprises in store for his photographer. He brought along a sterling silver humidor and a signed baseball that he thought should be included in the photo. That was simple enough, since the humidor was pretty cool and the ball was signed by a couple of decent prospects named Reagan and Gorbachev. But there was more.
  
   “Where do I sit,” DiMaggio then said to the startled Spindel. Apparently, Joe figured the still-life would be nicely enhanced with the man himself included. “And his agent wanted $50,000 to include him in the photo!” Spindel recalled in amazement. The agent may have been disappointed about that outcome, but not about the iconic image that resulted after the talented Spindel did a double exposure and inserted DiMaggio into the image.
   A few days later when Spindel took the prints to Atlantic City to show DiMaggio (he was there signing autographs), he ended up chillin’ with the Hall of Famer for much of the weekend, including ringside seats at a boxing match in an entourage that also included Ted Williams and Floyd Patterson.
  
   Spindel likes to recount his thoughts at the time as he pondered what people were saying about the distinguished quartet. “The people were probably saying, ‘Who are those three guys with Spindel?’ ” he said with a laugh.




Friday, June 12, 2009 5:45:44 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)  #  Comments [0]
# Thursday, June 11, 2009
If Regis says you are a genius, who can argue? ...
Posted by T.S.

Spindel5.jpg
   This is the second of three parts profiling acclaimed photographer David Spindel

For the man who came up with an extraordinary interactive body of work called Rebuses (visual riddles), it shouldn’t have been hard to imagine that David Spindel would find a way to keep the creative juices flowing. As the images shown here make clear, he’s taken quickly to the antiques and ephemera of the Old West, which he arranges with the same subtle brilliance that he applied to his baseball pieces. Plus, just as he did with baseball, the portraiture opportunities for some of the great television cowboys of yesteryear have provided ample evidence that he’s lost nothing off his metaphorical fastball.
  
   “I’m having a great time,” Spindel continued. “It’s totally different, and the people really appreciate what I do.” As he did in New York, there are almost endless demands for charities looking to utilize his talents for fund raising, plus there have still been lots of television and radio appearances (Good Morning, Arizona!), maybe not as much as you might find in the Big Apple environs, but more than enough to help fill up the schedule.
  
   And the siren call from his New York celebrity still reaches out from time to time. Only recently he was back in New York at Yoko Ono’s invitation for the opening of an annex to the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. Spindel, who began his career as a commercial still-life photographer in 1964, was selected by John Lennon to photograph what was to be his last recording session, and the images document the last days before Lennon’s death.
  
   The list of collectors of Spindel’s work reads like a Hollywood Walk of Fame souvenir program: Charlton Heston, Bob Hope, Johnny Carson, George Burns, Kate Hepburn, Billy Crystal, Donald Trump, Jerry Lewis, and Yoko Ono. One fan, television personality Regis Philbin, offered this morsel that the photographer employs on his website: “David Spindel is a little eccentric; however, you have to put up with him because he is a genius.”

   The baseball stuff (frequently featured in Sports Collectors Digest) so familiar to collectors often contain hundreds of pieces, all so artfully and perfectly arranged that it seems to the uninitiated to be a simple affair to simply fling down the various artifacts and take the picture. Try it sometime with a dozen pieces and see how simple it is, then multiply the degree of difficulty many times over.
  
   And just having the material to be used in these still-life images is a major challenge. For Spindel, it represented nearly 30 years worth of collecting, though his motivations for chasing all that stuff were far different than your typical collector’s.
  
   “I had more than 10,000 baseball items,” he recounted, noting that much of it was used for a photography assignment connected with various MLB anniversaries. When Spindel moved west, he got rid of most of the collection, selling to some of the dealers that he had bought from through the years and selling much of it on eBay.
  
   But, of course, just like everybody else he kept some of his favorite things. Like a number of signed baseballs from some of his subjects, a list that includes Dr. Ruth (Westheimer, not Babe), Donald Trump and Muhammad Ali.
  
   This entry concludes on the morrow with recollections of Spindel's unique relationship with Joseph Paul DiMaggio,




Thursday, June 11, 2009 2:49:53 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)  #  Comments [0]
# Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Spindel goes west, but he is still shooting ...
Posted by T.S.

Spindel3.jpg
   David Spindel
is a transplanted New Yorker who’s getting so used to Arizona that he can practically pass for a native. That is until he opens his mouth. Then it’s clear he’s a New Yawker.
  
   And if there were any doubt, one only needs to look back at many of the incredible collages of cards and memorabilia from the likes of Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays and a battalion of other baseball greats. Spindel’s iconic work is found in private collections and museums across the country, a testimony to a brilliant, creative mind that has literally invented its own genre in the world of photography, sports and beyond.
  
   Serious hobbyists and baseball fans will instantly recognize his remarkable work, a staggering array of tributes to the greats of the games by way of artfully arranging and photographing their memorabilia. It’s hard to imagine any single-player collector who doesn’t own a print from Spindel. Hell, they would be useful as checklists of a sort as well, since many of the original layouts can include hundreds of pieces related to that specific player of team (think Yankees, Bums, Cubs and more).
  
   If you go to his gallery on his website: www.spindelvisions.com, you could end up staying for a good deal longer than you might have planned. Even if you confine yourself simply to his baseball lineup (now a fraction of his overall inventory), you’re talking about 150 or more prints of some of the most stunning still-life photography imaginable.
  
   Not surprisingly, this is the kind of stuff of magazine and book covers, of which he can claim hundreds. His absolutely unique portraiture of everybody from John Lennon, George Burns and a host of Hollywood and entertainment celebrities to Yogi, Mickey, Babe, Joe, Henry, Tom Seaver and dozens more has left Spindel rubbing elbows with the giants of American culture over the last 50-plus years, and he’s got the photos to prove it. Spindel is 67 and still going strong, vowing never to retire despite living in the arid Arizona badlands in Anthem, not far from Scottsdale. He concedes that New York was getting to be too much for him
  
   “I’ll never retire,” said Spindel in a phone interview recently. “When I first moved out here from New York I was so depressed. What will I do, photograph cactus?”
  
  Spindel will answer that question and talk about his unique relationship with Joe DiMaggio in tomorrow's blog.




Wednesday, June 10, 2009 2:50:00 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)  #  Comments [0]
# Tuesday, June 09, 2009
The 19th Hartland turns up after 46 years ...
Posted by T.S.

Casey2.JPG
   The Hartland folks are touting this as a chance to go back in time, and given the description of the Casey Stengel Hartland Statue prototype, it’s hard to take issue with their assessment.
  
   Hartland of Ohio President Fay Halliwell recently announced that the company would be producing a Hartland Statue of Casey Stengel, which is newsworthy enough, but gets a second bump by virtue of the fact that the “new” statue will be made from a near half-century old prototype.
  
   The metal prototype of Casey was already done in 1963 when Hartland Plastics was sold to Revlon, and company owner Charlie Revlon showed up at the production facility in Hartland, Wis., and shut everything down. “When Revlon came in and told them to destroy all the molds, Frank Fulop saved the Stengel prototype,” said Craig Blakenship, Hartland’s official historian and a recent addition to the Hartland Ohio group that will produce the 19th statue.
  
   Fulop, who died in 2002, is a legendary figure in the hobby, having been the principal name attached to the collectible that has been a hobby mainstay virtually from the earliest days. The full-color Stengel prototype has been in the possession of Fulop’s son, who lives in Colorado.
  
   Blankenship, a Hartland fan for decades, purchased the www.Hartlands.com website from Kevin Cloutier. “I love Hartlands and I bought the website as a way to communicate with collectors,” he said.
  
   Conceived at the time when Stengel was managing the Mets, the statue prototype portrays him in a Mets uniform. Halliwell said the negotiations about use of logos are still underway; the statue already has licensing from CMG Worldwide, which markets the rights to some of the biggest names in the baseball galaxy, including Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jackie Robinson, Honus Wagner and Ty Cobb, to name a handful.
  
   It’s that licensing that contributes to a suggested retail price that Halliwell figures will be around $100 for a figure that will be manufactured in the United States (a Washington state artist who works under the company name L’il Monsters) and limited to perhaps 200 pieces. Hartland officials also noted that the Stengel statues, expected to be available later this year, will be manufactured to the same weight as the originals and will replicate the off-white color in the originals as well.




Tuesday, June 09, 2009 2:17:57 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)  #  Comments [0]