Friday, August 1, 2008

1983 Fleer Baseball Star Stickers

1983 saw the return of player stickers after a 1 year absence in 1982. The 1983 Baseball Stickers were smaller than the standard baseball card size, and were sold in strips of 12 stickers, with 10 players and 2 team logos per strip.


Here is a picture of the left half followed by the right half of one of the strips:


The design is very similar to the 1981 design with blue borders, a yellow frame around the picture, and even 2 red stars at the top. Here is a comparison of the 1983 sticker to the 1981 sticker featuring George Brett to give an idea in the difference in size and the similarity in design:

Rather than using the logo stickers as an insert, the logos were incorporated into the set itself. Here is the complete set of the logo stickers:


The last item on the bottom right is the back of one of the logo stickers. It contains an ad for a giant 3 x 4 foot poster that could be used for collecting your stickers. Instead of a sticker album (like what Fleer issued for the 1982 stamp set), Fleer issued this poster:


I don't think many kids sent away for the poster, as I have only seen the poster available once on ebay over the last few years. Given the size of the poster, its not a very practical way to store your collection as it would be difficult to fold or roll up once stickers were applied to it.

2 comments:

The Angels In Order said...

So that's where that Nolan Ryan I got on ebay is from. It was labeled as "1983 Fleer Star Sticker Blue Proof." I'm asuming it was cut from that poster you're showing.
Tom

Fleerfan said...

Tom,

I'm afraid you are right. I've seen some auctions for 1983 Sticker "Proofs", and from what I can tell in looking at the items up for auction, I'm afraid they were taken from the poster.

I had never seen the poster until about a year ago, so I'm guessing at some point someone must have cut these up figuring most collectors weren't even aware of the poster and figured they could get away with calling them "proofs" since most people would never know the difference.