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Posted By: petecld

Companies like IMG do own the rights to image of players but they don't own the rights to the "image" of a Baseball card created from those images. The resultant Baseball cards aren't copyright protected. The original art an be copyright protected but that would all be depend on the contract between the artist & company. Most artists in those days didn't keep the rights to their work.

If my understanding of copyright is correct even if a company like IMG holds the rights to an original photo of say the T206 Cobb (bat on shoiulder) they don't own any rights to repoduction of any of the T206 cards. If so anyone selling a T206 Cobb (bat on shoiulder) anywhere would be breaking copyright law.

Since T206s and other vintage Baseball cards aren't copyrighted, there can't be copyright infringement when reselling those cards.