1976-77 and 1977-78 Fleer NBA Basketball Stickers

After the 1974 Fleer Basketball Cloth Patch set, Fleer took a year off in 1975 before coming back with a Hi-Gloss Basketball Sticker set for the 1976-1977 season.


Each of the 22 teams in the set had one of two different designs. One design features the team logo surrounded by a colored border, and a smaller sticker on the top featuring another team (or in some cases the NBA logo):


The 8 teams with this design can be found with all 3 different colors - blue, red, and yellow. There are no variations with the smaller team sticker - it is the same for all 3 color variations.

The other design that was used for the remaining 14 teams featured the team logo against a white background, with a colored strip across the top announcing that these were "New All Pro Hi-Gloss Stickers":


There are 4 possible colored strips (blue, red, yellow, and green). In talking with some other collectors who have been working on this set, it does not appear that all the teams with this type of sticker all have the 4 different color variations, as some teams only appear to have 3, 2, or perhaps only 1 color.

The backs of the stickers are blank, which unfortunately makes it impossible to distinguish them from the following year's set as the 1977-1978 set is also blank backed, and has the exact same design, with a slightly different wrapper that now indicates the stickers have a "wet look":


Without having the luxury of opening a number of unopened boxes from each year, I'm afraid I can't confirm whether all the different color variations appear in both sets or not, so for purposes of this review, I am including both sets together as there are no differences that I am aware of except possibly one:


There are 2 possible explanations for the lettering differences between these Pistons stickers:

1) Fleer printed 2 different Pistons stickers in each set

2) One sticker is from 1976-77 and the other sticker is from 1977-78.

Until I come across an uncut sheet or find some unopened boxes, I am going to go on the assumption that the sticker with the white lettering is from 1976-77 and the sticker with the red lettering is from 1977-78, given the fact that the 1978-79 version of the sticker has red lettering as well.

Here is the set of all 22 teams (without color variations):




And finally, here is the 1976-77 box:


and the 1977-78 box (showing that the price of a pack increased 50%!):