UD Response
Just wanted to chime in quickly here as Bruce shared this post with me. I won't be able to go back and forth on this so I apologize, but just wanted to at least explain our position on it and answer some questions that came up.
When we see situations like this, we look at legal action we can take. If we believe there is a case we usually will go after them on copyright infringement. They have changed our product where we authenticate a game-used swatch is used and they have changed it. For a variety of reasons, we don't comment on cases filed and what happens to people we go after, but we certainly do not turn a blind eye to it. I shared this thread with our legal team and they are reviewing.
I also shared the thread with our head of creative who ended up coming in my office shortly after I sent it over to discuss this. He's a pretty busy guy, but he came over because he takes it very seriously. He shared that we continue to look at ways to deter this practice of changing swatches out. We have looked at adding die-packs, stitching the swatch to the card, adding microfibers to the card and even sealing the edges, but the costs tied to these are pretty extreme to say the least. We discussed it and I'm of the belief these extra costs are not worth putting in because ultimately, you will end up paying for some of that.
We have taken preventative action and made scans before, but that too is very difficult as the timing on everything is so tight and counts need to be taken anytime you move cards. Additionally, you do not want to risk damaging the cards during that process either. We want to limit the handling of higher-end cards like this as much as possible. It sounds so easy, but when you do it, you realize what a big deal it is to pull off.
It’s tough, as you know where there is money to be made there are always those who are looking to take advantage. These people just care about the fast buck and after they’ve been kicked off e-bay, message boards and threatened with legal action, they pop up again under a different name. In my opinion they are like cockroaches. Luckily there are more of us than there are of them to shine a light on what they do. So on behalf of Upper Deck and myself as a sports card afficianado, thank you for any and all of your efforts to deter this practice and make examples of these people.
Chris