Scott,
I know your pain...
Weddings wern't my cup of tea either...
Only did a few and that was too many.
Just say no, or lie and say you have other obligations.
Yaa... That's a shot of Ernie Irvan, a prototype of a collector series I ended up doing over a span of about three years.
Had to drop the Nascar logo because of licensing agreements.
I couldn't even come close to doing the quantities to pay for the licensing with the various teams, but I was allowed to wholesale these to licensed galleries at various tracks.
As it turned out, one gallery I sold to wasn't properly licensed and I got a call from Rousch Racing about 5:30AM one morning...
Someone on Jack's team bought a few of them from that gallery...
I doubt the man that called me was one of Guy's buddies 'cause he had no sense of humor whatsoever.
I had to fax Rousch's PR man a list of every single one that was sold and to which galleries. No action was taken against me, because I kept very good records of all my sales and I was able to show that I approached Nascar about the licensing issues. Mike Helton was the PR man for Nascar at the time and it was he that clued me into dealing with these galleries. I was informed that the gallery that duped me and Nascar was shut down.
Later... A man by the name of Hank Jones approached me about what it would take to get automated and produce these in the vast numbers that those types of cats were after... (He was Dale Sr's PR man at the time... Sports Imaging)
He offered to get me set up, but he wanted to keep me "hidden" out here on the West Coast and only deal through him. He didn't know this, but I had a cousin by marriage on #3's pit crew, Robby Cuningham... Robby's dad advised me to think twice about getting involved with Mr. Jones...
Shortly thereafter, Dale bought him out and sent him on his way...
By this time, I had just about my fill of dealing with people at this level and it just took all the fun out of it.
It took me years to work my way up to that level and once I got there... It became too friggin' serious for my wants.
Shoot want makes you happy!
