1981 Royal Crown Cola Baseball Stars (unlicensed) Baseball Forum

I have trouble believing this is a legitimate 1981 issue.  The bright colors, photos with logos, but not being a Topps set, white cardstock and player selection all lean toward this being a very recent custom set.  There is no way a set like this would have gone overlooked by player collectors (and both Beckett and SCD) for nearly 40 years.

Interesting point DC. I ran across this set somewhere online, and I'm usually on top of food issues, though admittedly the Diet Pepsi one did surprise me recently, thus when I saw this set I placed it on par with the Diet Pepsi set as one I had simply missed.

ACEO???

Stands for "Art Card Editions and Originals".  Seems to be what the eBay custom card folks are calling their creations instead of "customs" or "broders" when using copyrighted images or trademarks to which they have no claim..

So I looked at the checklist and one name popped out, Jeff Reardon. 

I didn't really follow his career, but in checking his stats on baseballreference.com. I'm not certain he'd qualify as a star in 1981. Maybe someone else can justify his inclusion with HOFers.

Around 1981, Reardon cards were over the $1.00 value. Good RP. Could be inclusive.

Looking at the Alan Trammell card, his Franklin batting glove stood out to me. A history of the company posted on their website seems to indicate that while the company was around at the time that their classic style with the Franklin name prominently displayed wasn't developed until 1982 and likely wasn't widely used before 1983. Would require a bit more digging/verifying but that seems to imply the Trammell picture is certainly not old enough to be from 1981 or earlier.

Here's the link for Richie Zisk original photograph.

https://baseballhall.org/discover-more/stories/short-stops/zisks-star-trident-comeback

Most other card images are cropped from photos easily found on google.

What caught my eye was no licensing.  No MLB nor MLBPA license but the team logos aren't airbrushed out.  It's suspicious that a major company would issue a set of cards without any permission (license).

However, according to recent posts, they are cards, we are a card database, license or not, they are eligible to be listed.