Thursday, March 5, 2009

1979-80 Fleer NBA Basketball Stickers

After 3 years of nearly identical sticker designs, Fleer changed the NBA Basketball sticker design slightly for the 1979-1980 season:


The smaller team stickers and the colored strips on the top of the stickers that were found on the 1976-77, 1977-78, and 1978-79 sets were replaced by a black sticker with the team's 1978-79 season record.

This change meant that the stickers that previously had color strip variations like this

no longer had color variations.

The only color variations in the set are the teams that had a colored border around their logo (Hawks, Celtics, Bulls, Cavaliers, Pistons, Rockets, Bucks, and Nets). As with the previous years, these teams can be found with blue, red, and yellow borders.

Here is a look at all 22 teams in the league at the time (without the colored border variations):




The other change to note is that the New Orleans Jazz moved to Utah after the 1978-79 season, so the 1979-80 sticker shows the Jazz playing in Utah.

Once again, there were puzzle pieces on the back of the stickers, which formed a picture commemorating the previous season's NBA Champion Seattle Supersonics win over the Washington Bullets:


Thanks to Craig for providing the above picture showing the completed puzzle.

However, the picture doesn't even feature the Supersonics, as we find out in looking at the fine print in the bottom right hand corner of the puzzle that the picture is actually from a game where the Bullets played the Golden State Warriors:


Packs contained 6 stickers and a piece of gum:


and packs were once again $0.20:


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