Depends, I guess. If Wotc created these simply as tokens of gratitude to the Robot Chicken folk who attended, getting the approval to use the picture (copyright owned bythe people behind Robot Chicken) would be doable, and the copyright leash that Wotc wants for the rest of its cards could easily be loosened due to the nature of their creation.
As for recycling borders and expansion symbols, it's possible. After all, the entirety of 8e test prints used the Unglued symbol. Not ruling out that it's a hoax, just saying that it's pretty possible that these exist.
mystical_tutor wrote:Well obviously none of the people that received them frequent this board.ouallada wrote:I'm more interested in finding out who these things were given out to, as that should shed some light on whether this card was actually produced by Wizards.
If this art work is kinda in "public domain" or with no known artist then you can believe that WotC did not produce a card with it. As I understand it is a matter of their own best interest to have a tight legal right to anything they produce. If they had found the artist and gotten his/her permission than, in all likelihood the artist would have received credit for it.
Now comes an interesting question. If WotC did not produce or license its production why is there a WotC copyright line? I think it is illegal to produce something and say it is copywrited when it isn't. If that is true it may be REAL hard to find who made this and gave it out.
An additional thought. If it is a legaly produced card, why go back and steal an expansion symbol (and use the wrong color border) instead of using something new and unique?
IMHO this is just some folks out there having fun (maybe even a WotC employee, or former employee, was having fun with them......) and has no relationship to serious collecting.
Gary