1983 AJAX Dog Food

[steve B]

Ballstreet was in a gray area. No MLB license of the cards but they were part of a magazine so it sort of slid by as allowed editorial content just in card form.

Personally I like some of the unlicensed cards. I collect them when I find them cheap.

I think many of them were as good as the products from the licensed companies, at least one issuer -Pacific- eventually did get a license. And there was an actual Broder. There were a few sets he did that were unlicensed, and some that were a bit gray area like a japan baseball set mostly showing american players.

There was a big push by the companies to stop the production, sort of an early look at the whole rights management thing.
What I found silly was the ways they went after them.
Basically forcing Becketts to not list them was one tactic, then getting writers to denounce them as having no quality and no value since the issuer could just print more. Which is something Upper Deck got caught doing and last I looked they're still listed.

There were abuses, sets "limited" to 15,000, but available with red borders until they sold out then another color later. (Another thing that sounds familiar, like 8 different refractors for each set....)

The later ones took advantage of a loophole. Most league and player licensing groups decided that the minimum number of players they'd license was 8 or something like that. And that they wouldn't try to shut down the unlicensed stuff with fewer players.

And that's part of where Star company got into things, and when Pacific made the Ryan and Seaver sets. And the unlicensed stuff became basically groups of single cards rather than sets.
The licensing enforcement was pushed off onto the teams and individual players and their agents who usually didn't have time to chase down some guy selling a few thousand cards of a popular player out of his garage.

The publicity smearing them and lack of listing in most of the guides meant they died out quietly as demand faded.


Steve B

[h2oya311]

These are definitely tough to come by. I have one complete set (of 6) and one incomplete set of 4 (missing the Henderson and Ripken, both of which I sold).

Chili Davis, Pedro Guerrero, Kent Hrbek, and Willie McGee don't command much of a premium. The Ripken will often fetch around $75-$100 and the Henderson is a $30-$50 card.

As others mentioned, this was not distributed by the maker of Ajax (cleaning product) or a dog-food company...it was fictitious. The Guerrero you have is from 1983 (according to the 2003 Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards). There were also some white-bordered 1984 "Ajax" cards of a few players. I don't have any of those as there is no R. Henderson in that set.

All the best. If you want to see scans of the other cards (or are interested in purchasing any - other than Henderson), let me know.

[DaClyde]

Originally Posted by steve B

And there was an actual Broder. There were a few sets he did that were unlicensed, and some that were a bit gray area like a japan baseball set mostly showing american players.

Keep in mind that there were two "Broders". Ed Broder prodiced the TCMA-style sets of Japanese players or Americans in Japan in the 1970s. In the 1980s, Rob Broder started selling his unlicensed cards as advertisements for his glossy 8x10 photos. Very quickly he, and others, realized collectors would eagerly scoop up any new cards of popular players and just started cranking out set after set of the simple, unauthorized sets to be sold at card shows. He was eventually sued by MLB and settled for a fine.

About that time, MLB changed it's licensing rules to prevent "publications" like Ballstreet or Legends from basically printing baseball cards in a magazine wrapper. The cards were supposed to be simply a feature of the magazine to enhance articles, and as such, were subject to the rules of your average newspaper or magazine (as started by Baseball Cards Magazine in the 80s), but eventually people saw that as a way to print their own baseball cards without a license, and wrap it in a tissue thin veil of a magazine.

[steve B]

Originally Posted by DaClyde

Keep in mind that there were two "Broders". Ed Broder prodiced the TCMA-style sets of Japanese players or Americans in Japan in the 1970s. In the 1980s, Rob Broder started selling his unlicensed cards as advertisements for his glossy 8x10 photos. Very quickly he, and others, realized collectors would eagerly scoop up any new cards of popular players and just started cranking out set after set of the simple, unauthorized sets to be sold at card shows. He was eventually sued by MLB and settled for a fine.

About that time, MLB changed it's licensing rules to prevent "publications" like Ballstreet or Legends from basically printing baseball cards in a magazine wrapper. The cards were supposed to be simply a feature of the magazine to enhance articles, and as such, were subject to the rules of your average newspaper or magazine (as started by Baseball Cards Magazine in the 80s), but eventually people saw that as a way to print their own baseball cards without a license, and wrap it in a tissue thin veil of a magazine.

Interesting, I sort of knew there were two, but didn't know what stuff went with which or even if it really was two different people and not just the same guy using a different name to confuse things.

I've never seen the cards that were ads for the photos. Did they have ad backs or were they more like regular cards than promos?

I should make a start at cataloging these things, but it's not easy. There's probably some ads in the hobby magazines for a little while, but they eventually stopped allowing them.

While they're unlicensed, I find that they're all a good deal harder to find than the licensed stuff.

Steve B

[DaClyde]

Actually I guess it was the 1986 Scott Cunningham cards I was thinking of that actually advertised the photographer's photos:



Look up Tim Peichel (tpeichel34 on eBay), he's spent the past 2-3 years attempting to catalog all the unlicensed issues he could find. He's assembled quite a database (and collection) of them.

[mcadams]

The ugliness of the cards would make keeping them....challenging.