RWS Scam on eBay?

Check this out. The cards in the picture have copyrights in the lower right-hand corner. You wouldn't expect to see this in cards published by Rider that come in a box like this. If these cards are truly 30 years old - as the ad says - they would be from a time way before copyrights started showing up.

A little article on the copyright law and when it actually started can be found here. It says it started in the Berne Convention of 1886. As to when the copyright symbol was in place, that, I don't know. I know though that my grandmother had to mail copies of the songs she had written to herself in someway to copyright them.

By "started showing up" I mean started showing up in the lower right-hand corner of these particular cards. That happened in the early 1980s.

I think those are the PCS sig she used.

my bad - on the outside of the card frame, in the boarder (those things that some folks cut off) is the copyright usgames printing.

They put those on in 1971.

Umbrae, it says 1971, but they didn't actually start putting it on the cards till the early 80s.

my bad more further. me quiet and hush now.

At least they didn't claim it was rare or expensive. The deck is only $8 American.

I am not sure I see what you mean...?

This is a site I found that mentions Copyrights concerning RWS. I do question whether the markings in the lower-right-hand corner are those of a Copyright (C) - If you were to close the top and bottom of the parentheses, it would enclose the "C" inside a circle. That is the actual copyright symbol. I think this might be an artist's symbol rather than a copyright symbol...or perhaps a sigil of some sort or other...?

http://www.sacred-texts.com/tarot/faq.htm

There's another site out there that has large pictures of all the individual cards. When I find it, I'll post the link, or maybe edit it into this one...? But if I don't get around to that, there's a picture of the sun card with the mark I am referring to in the bottom-right-hand corner of the picture itself.

http://www.sacred-texts.com/tarot/tcc/tcc03.htm

I hope this helps a little.

Yours,

StellarMyst

Ooops! I missed it! The picture was not big enough on my screen to see it clearly...but the above-posted information on the Copyright FAQ of the deck is worth a look.

Sorry about that!

StellarMyst

You can put a copyright notice on a work without first registering it with the copyright office. So it's possible that USG started putting the copyright notice on the cards before 1982 when they sent in the registration.

My copy is from 1971 or earlier and has no copyright notice.

Why doesn't someone just ask US games when they put the copyright on the cards themselves?