General Forum

Particuarly in the late 1980s and early 1990's as the hobby was booming, there were several card-related publications that included insert cards. Allan Kaye's, Ballstreet, Investor's Journal, Pocket Pages, RBI, Sports Report, Sports Educational, and many more.

Most, if not all, of these publications contain cards as part of the distribution with players featured with full team names/logos. Flipping through, I don't see any specific mention of a license (MLB or MLBPA), so my question is, how were these publications able to produce and distribute cards legally? How are they differentiated from the broder/unlicensed cards?

My guess is that many of these were issued in full sheet inserts or panels as part of a magazine, which maybe is a loophole in "card" production and sale. Would be interested to know if others have thoughts because it was a prominent practice back then, but also something not seen (at least commonly) in the last 25+ years.

Allen Kaye and Investors Journal were released as panels in their respective price guides. Baseball Cards magazine did the same in the late 80s / early 90s. Ballstreet released panels of individual player pictures and stats in a 5" x 7" booklet. The cards I have are cut from those pages. The others most likely fall into the same pattern.

Intriguing. I have a few of these types of cards here and there. It might be fun to search out clean copies of the original publications with cards intact. I always gravitated towards the Beckett stuff for card pricing.

In most cases, I suspect the magazines were merely the "packaging" for the cards.

I remember those panels of cards in the 80s/90s magazines as well.  My guess is that no license was needed due to freedom of the press and the first amendment.  As part of a news magazine, they were excempt from needing approval from the league/players association.

Yes, I believe the early claim was that the cards were somehow an extension of the articles about the players.