Monday, August 10, 2009

1995 & 1996 Fleer Panini Baseball Stickers - Coming Full Circle

Fleer had one more series of Baseball team logo stickers which they released a few years after their final set of insert stickers in 1991. Fleer partnered with Panini in 1995 and 1996 to release Baseball Album stickers which included team logo stickers.

The 1995 stickers have logos against a white background with a colored border:





while the 1996 release has a similar design, but is on a silver foil sticker:





The stickers were not inserts, but were part of the regular set.

You may be thinking that the design of these stickers look familiar.....and you'd be right:


Fleer came full circle with these sticker sets and returned with a design and sticker size that was almost identical to their very first Baseball decals that they released back in 1960, 1961 & 1962.

Just for fun, here is a look at Fleer's very first Baseball logo decals from 1960:


and 1961/62:


What a perfect set of bookends to start and finish the 30+ years of Fleer Baseball decals/patches/quiz cards/iron ons/stickers with 2 sets of stickers in the mid 1990's that so closely resemble the very first decal sets from the early 1960's.

Its interesting taking a look at which teams have undergone significant logo changes during this time, and which seem to hardly have changed at all. The other thing you can appreciate in comparing the sets is how many more teams joined the league since the first set was released in 1960 as MLB had grown from 16 teams in 1960 to 28 teams by 1996 (with 2 more teams joining a few years later in 1998).

This wraps up the review of Fleer Baseball Stickers as we've now finished looking at every baseball sticker set that Fleer released. I'll be picking up where I left off with the Fleer Football sticker review as we get closer to Football season, but I've still got a few baseball related items to review, so stay tuned!

2 comments:

Scott said...

I have really enjoyed these baseball posts. Thanks for your efforts. I look forward to the football posts.

Vince Prygoski said...

I wonder what the story was with the 1960-61 Yankees and Red Sox stickers. The Red Sox shows a logo that i have never seen anywhere else, and the Yankees is just the team name in plain letters, not really a logo at all. Maybe Fleer did not have the rights to use the actual Yankee and Red Sox logos in those sets????? I am pretty sure that the Yanks were already using the round logo with script "Yankees" and the bat and Uncle Sam hat at that time, and the Sox were (again, i think) using either the animated red sock with a bat, or maybe the current two red socks logo.