Tuesday, July 8, 2008

1980 Fleer Baseball World Series Cards

As a follow up to the previous post about the 1980 Fleer Baseball Sticker set, I wanted to review the sticker backs which contain a card set depicting each World Series from 1940 through 1979.

The artwork on the 1940 - 1970 cards for the most part was from the 1971 Fleer World Series card set with artwork by R. G. Laughlin, although there are a couple of years where different artwork was used between the 2 sets. Additional designs were added for the 1971 through 1979 World Series contests.

While the artwork is generally the same, there are some subtle differences between the 1971 and 1980 cards. See if you can spot the 2 differences between the 1971 World Series card on the top and the 1980 Fleer Sticker World Series card on the bottom:


The 1980 Fleer Sticker cards added information on the number of games each team won as well as added a registered trademark (R) under the MLB logo.

Since the 1971 set only covered up through the 1970 World Series, additional cards were needed for the 1971 - 1979 seasons.

Fleer had created an updated World Series set in 1978 with new artwork from Bob Laughlin which covered the World Series games through 1977 as a promotion for Good Humor.

Here is a sample card for the 1977 World Series:

Front:

Back (with the same design as 1971 set and continuing the numbering in the bottom left corner):



This article on the Vintage Card Trader website shows the 1971-1977 update cards.

The most interesting "update" card is the 1971 World Series card featuring Roberto Clemente:


This design was not used for the 1980 set. It was replaced with another design:


presumably because they did not have a release from the Clemente estate to use his image.

The other "update" cards from 1972 through 1977 were repeated in the 1980 set, with additional cards created for the 1978 & 1979 Series.

Here is a look at the complete 1980 Fleer World Series set:





If Fleer were still around today, this would be a great "retro" set to go back and update, either as its own release or as an insert set. There are over 25 World Series that have taken place since this last time this set was released. It would be a lot of fun to see the World Series matchups over the last quarter century depicted in the R. G. Laughlin style.

5 comments:

Steve Gierman said...

Maybe if Upper Deck ever brings back a Fleer or Fleer Tradition set, this could be an insert set.

crashcrad said...

Anyone know where I can get the 1970-`1979 cards? I'm a WS collector and have all the regular issued cards (except 1954). Thanks to anyone who can help!

anthony said...

I was looking through some baseball card's and found the roberto clemente card any idea what it is worth?

petMonster said...

Hi. I've noticed some discrepancies between several of my sticker cards that I was hoping you might be able to shed some light on.

Four of my cards (card #'s 60, 63, 64, & 65) almost appear to be from a completely different (earlier?) set. They do not contain the MLB logo on the front, but instead have a baseball that says "World Series" in it, along with the World Series year (in this case, 1963, '66, '67, & '68). Also, the print on the back is blue, not black.

My other 15 cards go as high as the '69 series, and they DO have the MLB logo on the front (without the Registered Trademark (R)). The print on the back is black. However, in the bottom right corner of each card (to the far right of the word "Corp." there is a very small upper-case letter "B".

I can't seem to reconcile which sets my cards are from. I can only guess that my 15 cards that contain the letter "B" are a later reprint of some sort, I can't find any information on them.

Any information you can provide would be greatly appreciated, as well as a wonderful addition to this comprehensive site.

Thanks.

petMonster said...

Hi. I've noticed some discrepancies between several of my sticker cards that I was hoping you might be able to shed some light on.

Four of my cards (card #'s 60, 63, 64, & 65) almost appear to be from a completely different (earlier?) set. They do not contain the MLB logo on the front, but instead have a baseball that says "World Series" in it, along with the World Series year (in this case, 1963, '66, '67, & '68). Also, the print on the back is blue, not black.

My other 15 cards go as high as the '69 series, and they DO have the MLB logo on the front (without the Registered Trademark (R)). The print on the back is black. However, in the bottom right corner of each card (to the far right of the word "Corp." there is a very small upper-case letter "B".

I can't seem to reconcile which sets my cards are from. I can only guess that my 15 cards that contain the letter "B" are a later reprint of some sort, I can't find any information on them.

Any information you can provide would be greatly appreciated, as well as a wonderful addition to this comprehensive site.

Thanks.