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.