Wit, so you think people here are going to buy drawings by some random artist buds of yours with no connection to Wacky Packages? Why would they care? Jay has only been able to sell them because he's Jay. Jay usually sells his drawing for around $300 so these $5 simpler doodles are an anomaly. They were done as some kind of favor to Greg to help him pawn off the big stack of Wacky II books he bought. The big difference between the commissioned sketches and the Topps card sketches is that the OLDS sketches are actual trading cards, part of the series and specifically limited and copyrighted. If it's made by Topps it's a WP. If it's done by Jay or anyone else on their own including me it's a bootleg. I agree that there needs to be some limitations of things and I've already heard some talk about it. I'm sure when I bring up the sketches in my meeting tomorrow I'll hear some info. Don't worry they are aware of this conundrum. They don't want to limit their artists side projects which help them make some much needed extra cash but also want to protect the integrity of sketch cards siunce these are now becoming common place in all kinds of Topps series. I will LYK what is brought up.
I never said my friends were going to create drawings. They will in fact create beautifully colored shirts with wacky pack characters on them. You needn't worry about whether they will sell don't let that be a distraction for you. The point is that Topps again doesn't seem too concerned about protecting the copyrights of its products and images. They blew it off with Lost Wackys.
I didn't suggest Jay should be shut out of opportunities but possibly some stuff reserved for artists freedom and some protected for future Topps products. May be hard to do as one can't predict the future. I agree Jay doing Old School cards is part of the appeal and that one off stuff not assoicated with a Topps release doesn't seem to have the same market value so I will refrain from referencing market value as that is not my point. It is purely about a level of uniqueness that should be preserved for these special sets otherwise, the sets become less special, that is all there is to it.
Let me present this a different way, let's assume for a future Old School set, some neat new combination of existing wacky characters was presented or they were presented in some form of new and novel way that at the moment is unique to the Old School set(really cool new quotes or as part of new gags). If an artist can then in effect exactly mimic what was produced in the Old school set, it DOES take away from the specialness. It is hard to argue that it has NO impact which you seem to be saying.
