Subject:      Trouble Afoot from prototype owner and Hasbro legal
From:         datalore@Iavoidspamjax-inter.net (Jay Pennington)
Date:         1998/03/01
Message-ID:   <6daeea$3jo@news.southeast.net>
Newsgroups:   rec.arts.sf.starwars.collecting.misc

I swiped this off the AP news wire on Monday. It has since been
printed in a newspaper article that Sirsteve scanned and put on his
site. The scan's a bit hard to read, though, and I've been meaning to
post this anyway, so here's the whole thing.

I'm very interested in what everyone's take on this is. 
(Gus? Eric? Chris? Phil? and especially Ron!)
I have a many qualms with what this lady and Hasbro's legal dept. are
claiming, but I'll leave the commentary to the true experts. :)

Here's the cut-and-pasted-without-permission article:

------------------

BC-FL--Star Wars Collectibles, Adv23,077
For release Monday, Feb. 23, and thereafter
An AP Member Exchange
Collectors find the value of their figures deflating due a secondary market
By RICK KENNEY
News Chief

    LAKE WALES, Fla. (AP) - You'll have to pardon Virginia Brooks if
sometimes she feels as though the Force is not with her.
    Brooks, a Lake Wales resident and mother of four, felt a cosmic
rush last summer when, with the help of toymaker executives and
Star Wars memorabilia collectors, she discovered that a box of
figurines she bought at a flea market 15 years ago might be worth
hundreds of thousands of dollars in the collectibles market.
    The authenticity of her collection was certified last year by
James K. Golden, the project manager at Kenner (now Hasbro Toy
Group) in 1982, when the single box of figurines Brooks later found
in Ohio somehow got out of the factory and into the marketplace -
even though they were pre-production prototypes that were to have
been destroyed.
    Since then, Brooks and other collectors have discovered the down
side - Lord Vader might call it the "dark side" - to what
Lucasfilm Ltd., which owns rights to the moneymaking merchandise
that spun off from the Star Wars movies, and Hasbro, a licensed
manufacturer of Star Wars toys, refer to as the secondary market,
where reproductions, frauds and unverified claims not only flood
and dilute the collectibles market but potentially devalue
authentic collections.
    The secondary market for collectibles in 1982, when Brooks
impulsively paid "about $15" for 328 figurines, then stashed them
away from her children, included swap meets where collectors traded
or bought such things as Darth Vader dolls.
    In the cyber-age, the secondary market for collectibles includes
wheeling and dealing via the Internet - where web sites sometimes
advertise what are purported to be Kenner creations, even though
Golden, among others, says that's simply not possible unless
someone is creating unauthorized figurines and spiriting them out
of the factory.
    "Because of this that's going on, the value of my figures is
being depressed," Brooks said.
    And with Star Wars knockoffs being advertised and sold on the
virtually unregulated secondary marketplace for as much as $650 for
a single figurine, Brooks says she's fighting mad.
    In recent months she has campaigned to persuade those who are
advertising and selling what they claim to be authentic Kenner
figurines to submit their wares for proof of authenticity. So far,
she has received nothing but terse refusals from some
Internet-based collectors and dealers.
    There's good reason for that Brooks and Golden say, since many
figurines in the marketplace likely are flat-out fakes.
    Still, to those collectors and dealers in the secondary market,
Brooks has issued this challenge: Have an expert - someone like
Golden - examine their Star Wars figurines to determine whether
they're authentic.
    Brooks is not alone in her concern. One web site featuring a
collectors archive is currently posting a warning about an overseas
dealer.
    Hasbro and Lucasfilm Ltd. also appear to be worried about what
one Hasbro executive calls "the dilution to the Star Wars brand."
    In a Dec. 19, 1997, letter to Tonik Barber, director business
affairs at Lucasfilm, James M. Kipling, Hasbro's vice president for
legal affairs, refers to "materials from the Internet and ...
other sources" and the "problem they represent."
    Kipling summarized "these problems" as:
    * advertisements for "custom" Star Wars items "licensed to
us;"
    * "Counterfeit figures ... (such as) Star Wars designs applied
to characters packaged under other brand names;"
    * "A collector (Ron Salvatore) making and selling `unproduced'
Kenner micro figures;" and
    * "Same figures being offered by `The Earth' (a collectibles
store web site)."
    "...all of the variations which are being offered for sale seem
subject to a policing action," Kipling wrote to Lucasfilm.
    And, the letter from Hasbro noted: "Obviously we are
concerned."
    Kipling this week would not say whether Lucasfilm had responded
to Hasbro's letter in the month since it was sent. "We have a very
close relationship with Lucasfilm," he said Wednesday, "and I
don't feel it would be appropriate" to comment on whether
Lucasfilm had taken up the investigation.
    On Thursday, Kipling added that a Lucasfilm representative told
him that Lucasfilm would not comment on any ongoing investigation,
but when pressed, Kipling refused to categorize that statement as
admission of an investigation into possible fraud.
    Barber, of Lucasfilm, did not return a reporter's phone call.
    All of which has left Brooks, who last year thought she was
sitting on a gold mine, uncertain whether her collection of Star
Wars figurines has any value in a marketplace possibly tainted by
fakes reproduced by collectors with access to toy molds.
    "If I had a fair market," said Brooks, who rejected offers
last year of up to $50 for her figures, "I'd definitely want to
sell them."
    
    
    (Copyright 1998 by The Associated Press.  All Rights Reserved.)
    
AP-NY-02-18-98 0754EST


-Jay Pennington
datalore@Iavoidspamjax-inter.net