March is Fleer Baseball Cloth Patch Month! A history of Fleer's Cloth Patch releases

Its time to start reviewing one of the more well known and most popular Fleer issues - the Baseball Cloth Patches.


The Fleer Baseball Cloth Patches were issued over an 9 year period from 1969 through 1977. Given this long time frame, there are a large number of patch variations.

I am going to do a daily review spotlighting each team and their variations. Some teams had very few changes over the 9 years, while others seemed to have a new variation almost every year.

Each year the Cloth Patches were packaged with a card, although the cards are never mentioned on the packs. The cards were included to make the pack more sturdy (almost like a backing board for a comic) since the stickers themselves are quite flimsy.

Before we start the team reviews, here is a year by year review of the packaging and the cards that were included with the Cloth Patches:

1969

Wrapper:


Box:


Card: Stadium Card


I'm placing this box and wrapper as 1969 given the Orioles logo on the box which was only used on the 1969 quiz card. For 1970 and later, the Orioles logo was in an orange circle, so this most likely is the 1969 issue. Also, the Tigers and Cardinals logos shown on the box and wrapper match the 1969 quiz cards, but not 1970 or beyond.

The 1969 quiz cards were actually packaged with the Fleer Baseball Pennants & Stamps, and not the Cloth Patches.

1970

Wrapper:


Box:




Card: Quiz Card with 2 Questions:

1971

Wrapper:


Box:






Card: Quiz Card with 3 Questions and Larger Logo

1972

Wrapper:

Box:

Card: Quiz card with small logos on the bottom of the card

1973

Wrapper (4 versions):




Box:


Cards: A 40 card set entitled Baseball Famous Feats (some of these will look very familiar if you check the back of your 1986 Fleer Baseball stickers):

1974

Wrappers (3 different) & Box:


Cards: A 42 card set entitled Baseball's Wildest Days and Plays:

1975

Wrapper:


Box:


Cards: A 28 card set entitled Pioneers of Baseball:

1976

Wrapper:


Box:



Check out the top left corner of the picture - the card that comes with the patches is finally shown on the box, although the box and packs still don't indicate cards are included.

Cards: A 42 card set entitled Baseball Firsts:

 1977

In 1977, Fleer switched over to producing glossy stickers, which they called "Hi-Gloss Grand Slam" stickers.  Even though they are not mentioned on the box or wrapper,

Box:

Wrapper:

cloth patches apparently were included with the glossy stickers as this article from the Sports Collectors Digest (SCD) on May 15, 1977 mentions at the bottom of the page:

As you can see, there was a lot that was issued over this 9 year period. We'll get started with reviewing the teams and their patches tomorrow.