1972 Fleer Baseball Cloth Patches Uncut Sheet - Another Piece of the Puzzle

Here is a picture of what I believe to be a 1972 Fleer Baseball Cloth Patches uncut sheet:

 

The reason I believe it is from 1972 is that there are no Senators or Rangers patches, so this would most likely be from the season when the Washington Senators moved to Texas to become the Rangers:

 

 

This sheet comes from the same person who provided a picture of a framed uncut Fleer Baseball Cloth Patches sheet from 1974 which I profiled previously:

 

I dated that sheet as being from 1974 due to the lack of Padres patches as this would have most likely been from the year that they were planning to move to DC.

In comparing the 2 sheets, we can see that the Orioles replaced the Rangers on the 1972 sheet for both the logo patch as well as the cap patch. Presumably the Senators would have been in those positions on the earlier sheets.  The 1972 sheet also allows us to see the Padres, which were replaced on the 1974 sheet by a Yankees logo and a Cardinals cap patches, making those effectively double prints.

Other than these changes, the positions of the other teams all remain the same between the 2 sheets.  We can also see some of the logos that changed, such as the Indians logo and cap, the Braves cap (from a capital "A" to a lower case "a") and the Angels (from the lower case "a" in 1972 to the capital "A" in 1974.

I would like to thank the person who reached out to me and provided these pictures as they greatly enhance our understanding of these cloth patches and some of the changes that occurred over the years.

Secrets Revealed In a 1974 Fleer Uncut Cloth Patches Sheet

Recently I had someone contact me regarding an uncut sheet of Fleer Cloth Patches to see if I would be interested in purchasing a framed uncut sheet.

Needless to say, I was blown away by the beauty of this item.  Here was the Holy Grail of Fleer cloth patch collecting!

I asked how they had acquired the sheet, and they told me that their grandfather had worked as a printer in Philadelphia, which is where Fleer was headquartered.  He did not work for Fleer, but their print shop did work for Fleer. 

Apparently anything that was off even by 1/16th of an inch would be scrapped, so he would save some of the sheets that were being trashed.  While the grandfather had saved a number of different sheets, over time most of those sheets had been given away to friends. 

This particular sheet had not been given away, and the owner decided to have it professionally framed a few years ago.

In discussing what the seller was looking to sell the sheet for, they explained that they had gotten an appraisal on it a few years ago of $2,000, so they were interested in selling it for $2,500 as they had spent a few hundred on the professional framing.

I let the seller know that I wasn't in a position to spend that amount, but that I would be glad to feature the sheet on my blog, and would let them know if anyone expressed interest.  If anyone is interested in making a serious offer, please let me know, and I will be glad to pass your information along to the seller.

As for the secrets revealed in the sheet, I think I am able to date the sheet by the fact that there is one team missing.

After comparing the layout of the sheet to the partial uncut sheet that I do have

I noticed that the 4th patch from the left on the top row on my sheet was the Padres while the full uncut sheet had a Yankees patch in its place.  Same situation for the 3rd patch from the left on the 3rd row - instead of the Padres cap patch, there was an extra Mets cap patch.  There isn't a single Padres patch on the full uncut sheet.

Therefore, I would assume this sheet would be from early 1974 when the Padres were about to move to Washington, DC.  It looks like Fleer omitted the Padres patches from the sheet as they had no idea of what patch to create for the relocating team, similar to the situation Topps had when producing their 1974 set:

Unless Fleer made changes later in the print run, it appears that Fleer did not issue any Padres patches in 1974. 

One other piece of helpful information from the sheet comes from the top left corner of the sheet:

For patches with a dark border, the instructions for peeling the sticker are black, so it looks like patches with instructions in white

were not issued until at least 1975.

I would like to thank the person who reached out to me about the sheet for contacting me and for providing a number of pictures.  They also sent pictures of 2 other Fleer items which I will be sharing in future posts, so stay tuned!

Celebrating 10 Years and 1,000,000 Page Views!

I'd been meaning to post this last month, but ended up being very busy during the holidays.  I wanted to announce that December marked the 10 year anniversary of The Fleer Sticker Project!

Another exciting milestone for the blog occurred in December as well when the blog passed the 1 million page view mark.

I would have never imagined that when I made my first post back on December 12, 2007 that 10 years later the blog would still be going, and that it would have been viewed as much as it has.

My posting frequency has decreased significantly since the first few years where I was focused on trying to cover all of the different Fleer releases and the many variations from the early 1960s to the early 1990s

  

 

 

 

as well as the many different oddball sets from the late 1960's through the 1980's:

 

 

 

  

Although I've covered just about every Fleer set that I had planned on reviewing, I still post occasionally when I come across something I find interesting that I would like to share.

Its been very rewarding to hear from people who have questions about things I've covered, and from people who have contacted me with additional information to share.  Putting together a resource of information on these Fleer items that for the most part fall outside of the standard baseball card catalogs was my goal in starting the blog, so it is very satisfying when I hear from others who say that the blog has helped them with their collection.

I'd like to say Thank You to everyone who has checked out the blog, and especially to those folks who have left comments and who have shared scans and information for me to post.   Thanks for helping me keep this going for 10 years!  Its great to know there are other collectors who also enjoy collecting Fleer decals/patches/stickers/cards/stamps, etc, as well as other items featuring team logos.

1967 Fleer Baseball Emblems Cards & Cloth Patches

Since I first wrote about the 1967 Fleer Baseball Emblems Cards & Cloth Patches almost 10 years ago, I have slowly been making progress on finding images for this extremely rare set.  That process was helped greatly when John recently contacted me looking for some Emblem cards to complete his set, and was kind enough to share the cards in his collection:

 

 

John has done a great job in tracking down these rare cards, and is now only looking for the Senators and the Giants to complete the set. Even though there were 20 MLB teams at the time, there are only 19 team emblem cards and team cloth patches as the Houston Astros did not have an Emblem Card or Cloth Patch for either the 1967 or 1968 sets, as there were licensing issues that impacted not only Fleer, but Topps as well.

The main things that distinguish the 1967 team Emblem cards from the 1968 cards are 1) the fact that the card has the 1966 won - loss record on it (the 1968 card does not have a W/L record), 2) it says "SAVE ALL 19 CARDS" in Red (while the 1968 card has this printed in Black), and 3) the 1968 card contains a "Baseball Fact" while the 1967 card does not:

 

From the scans that John sent, it appears that the only team with a different logo in the 1967 set is the Reds, as they are the "Redlegs" with a head shot of Mr. Red on the 1967 card, and are the "Reds" with a full body shot of Mr. Red in 1968:

The other team with a significant change is the A's, who are in Kansas City in 1967, but in Oakland in 1968, although the logo remains the same.

For a more detailed look at the 1968 set, please see my review of the set here.

As for the Cloth Patches, the 1967 patches are almost impossible to find.  In the nearly 10 years since I first wrote about these, I've only been able to find pictures of 8 of the 19 teams.

The 1967 Cloth Patches are nearly identical to the 1968's except for the fact that the 1968's include the directions "PEEL OFF HERE" and dotted lines around the logos while the 1967's do not.

Here is a comparison showing the differences on the cloth patches between 1967 and 1968:

In addition to the Orioles, I've only been able to find pictures of the following 1967 cloth patches:

 

 

 

 

In addition to one large team sticker with 3 cloth patches (sometimes referred to as tallboys), packs also contained a smaller sticker that included 3 patches of the names of teams (sometimes referred to as trio patches):

I have no idea of how many variations of these there may be, or if there is a way to distinguish the 1967 patches from the 1968 patches (other than the fact that any patches with the A's would either say Kansas City in 1967 or Oakland in 1968).

The packs for 1967 look similar to the 1968 packs, with the main difference being the title "Baseball Emblems" is red in 1967, and black with a different font in 1968:

In each pack, there was one large team Cloth Patch sticker (consisting of 3 patches), and one of the smaller trio stickers (with 3 team names), which make up the 6 cloth patches in each pack.  In addition to the patches, there was also one team Emblem card in each pack, which was included to give the pack some stability, but it is not mentioned on the pack (as were none of the other various cards inserted with cloth patches over the years for some reason).

Finally, here is a look at the box the packs came in:

Many thanks to John for sharing his collection of team emblem cards, and for giving me a great reason to update my review of this set.

1955 Post Sugar Crisp Cereal Commercial Featuring Ted Williams and Baseball Patches

I recently came across this great commercial for Post Sugar Crisp cereal from 1955 with spokesman Ted Williams talking about the the baseball team logo patches, and demonstrating how you can apply them:

For a detailed look at the 1955 Post Sugar Crisp cereal baseball patches including the never issued Kansas City A's patch, please take a look at my earlier post showing an uncut sheet of the patches.

1968 Topps Test Cloth Football Patches Wax Box

Recently an item came up for auction that I thought I'd never see - a 1968 Topps Test Real Cloth Football  Patches wax box:

Up until now, the only picture of the box I had seen was the proof sheet that had been offered for sale by the Topps Vault, which I included in my review of the set back in 2010.

Given how scarce this test issue was, I didn't think I would ever see a wax box, so I was very pleased to see the seller posted a number of pictures of the box:

This is one of my favorite Topps test sets, with the colorful team patches and the oversized team cards,

but unfortunately it was done on such a limited basis that the cards and patches are very hard to find, and therefore very expensive.

To give collectors a chance to put together a modern version of this set, I think it would be a great idea for Topps to incorporate this set into next years Archives Football release.  Just as they did this year honoring the 1971 Topps Greatest Moments (my other favorite test set) in this year's Baseball Archives set,

they could make the team cards box toppers (as they are the same size as the Greatest Moments), and include the cloth team patches a an insert set.  Are you listenting Topps?