I was always a bit concerned that my 88-89 OPC Tribute would be copied and reproduced. I thought people might print them off for themselves. In the end, I decided "whatever". As long as they aren't passing them off as their own or trying to sell them. When I think about it, all I am doing is reproducing someone else work anyways and then adding in someone else's picture I found on the internet. Although I do put a lot of work into the templates. I don't scan a card, erase the picture and then put in a new one. Every template started as a blank file. I guess you can call them original duplicates, but I do consider the templates my own.
Today I was on eBay looking to see if a certain player had any cards listed. The cards he had listed was a custom card. I have seen this seller before and I decided to see what else he had. What I saw looked too familiar. He had several 88-89 OPC cards. The pictures on them were not the ones I used but the card design just looked way too familiar. Upon further checking, I am pretty sure he copied my file.
Compare the two sets of cards above. My version is on the left and his is on the right. Notice how similar the borders, fonts and positioning of the logo are. When I did the tribute set, the hardest part was the Pin and the shadow. Let's put my picture on top of his and set mine to 50% opacity and compare.
Upon comparison, every lines up exactly with the exception of the pin marks that cover the player picture. My picture has the shadow on top of the player picture, but his doesn't. The first reason that jumps to mind is because when he removed the picture from my version, he also had to remove the shadow. Compare side by side and the with mine over top at 50% opacity.
The shadow lines up perfectly. Even where the shadow dots met the upper border of the picture. To do the shadow I used the pencil tool, did a bunch of dots and then used the copy and paste. I had to adjust the size of the shadow dots as I got to the bottom of the shadow as well. Even the marks on the Pin are exactly the same. I had a hell of a time with the pin originally since using the paint dump tool would results in more and more of the black marks inside the pin to be colored over. The pin marks were made with the pencil tool set at 1 pixel.
Also, of interest is the use of trademark on the team logo. On some team logos, I erased the trademark and on others I left it. The original 88-89 set had trademarks on all the logos. For both mine and his cards, there is a trademark for the Penguins and Canadiens. For the Oilers card, there is not a trademark for either.
Here the
link for the one of his auctions. His user ID is norm202020.
Part of me feels pissed about this. Part of me feels flattered. Part of me thinks it's the pot calling the kettle black. Do you think he has copied my cards and put in his own player picture? Or just a coincidence? What do you think of custom cards and selling them? How would you feel in this situation?
It took 405 days to get this return back, but I am extremely happy with it. Jean Beliveau is one of hockey's greatest players. He won 10 Stanley Cups as a player and another 7 as an executive with the Montreal Canadiens. Beliveau was the first ever winner of the Conn Smythe trophy, back in 1964-65. At age 39, in his 20th season, Believeau scored 76pts in 70 games, good enough for 9th spot in the league scoring race. Beliveau finished his career with 507 goals and 1219 points. He was a first ballot HHOFer in 1972. I sent this request back in October of 2011. This is my longest return and first to make the round trip of a calendar year. Definitely worth the wait.
