1981 Fleer Baseball Stickers and All Star Game Set

The timing of today’s review couldn’t have worked out any better given the MLB All Star Game being played tonight in Yankee Stadium. We’ve reached 1981 with the review of the annual Fleer sticker releases, and the 1981 set just happens to have a set of cards highlighting the All Star Games from 1933 through 1980 on the backs of the stickers.

To give you an idea of what the All Star cards look like, here is the card from the last time the game was played in Yankee Stadium which was 1977:

As a side note, I am now officially OLD. If you have been watching baseball long enough to have seen the All Star Game played in the same stadium twice, I think that makes you an “old timer”.

I remember watching this game back in 1977 and being really excited because my favorite pitcher Jim Palmer was starting the game. He proceeded to get lit up for 3 home runs (Joe Morgan leading off the game and Greg “The Bull” Luzinski with a 2 run homer later in the first inning, and Steve Garvey with a solo shot in the third inning), and left the game down 5-0.

Taking a look at the starting lineup from that 1977 All Star Game, HALF of these guys are now in the Hall of Fame, including 6 out of the 9 starters for the AL (and they still lost!):

Starting lineups

National League				American League
Order	Player	Team	Position	Order	Player	Team	Position
1	Joe Morgan	Reds	2B	1	Rod Carew	Twins	1B
2	Steve Garvey	Dodgers	1B	2	Willie Randolph	Yankees	2B
3	Dave Parker	Pirates	RF	3	George Brett	Royals	3B
4	George Foster	Reds	CF	4	Carl Yastrzemski	Red Sox	CF
5	Greg Luzinski	Phillies	LF	5	Richie Zisk	White Sox	LF
6	Ron Cey	Dodgers	3B	6	Reggie Jackson	Yankees	RF
7	Johnny Bench	Reds	C	7	Carlton Fisk	Red Sox	C
8	Dave Concepción	Reds	SS	8	Rick Burleson	Red Sox	SS
9	Don Sutton	Dodgers	P	9	Jim Palmer	Orioles	P

There were also 8 reserves who made the Hall: Steve Carlton, Goose Gossage, Tom Seaver, Bruce Sutter, Mike Schmidt, Dave Winfield, Dennis Eckersly, and Nolan Ryan. That makes 17 Hall of Famers at the 1977 All Star Game, plus all time hit king Pete Rose. Not a bad year in terms of talent.

Getting back to the stickers, the designs are the same as the 1980 set with 4 different stickers for each team, with the only real change being the fact that the stickers with the team’s won - loss records have been updated to reflect the results of the 1980 season.

For some reason Fleer did not honor the Phillies with a World Series designation as they had done the previous year for the Pirates. However, the same Orioles & Pirates border color variations exist from the previous year.

Only 2 teams underwent any significant changes from the 1980 set to the 1981 set. The Braves went from the lower case "a" to the upper case "A"


and the Padres went from a dark brown "SD" to a lighter brown "SD" with an orange outline:

The one other difference on many logo stickers was the addition of the registered trademark symbol (R) as seen on the Yankees logo sticker on the right:

The (R) symbol was added to most of the teams in 1981, but not all of them. If you look at the A's logo stickers above, you'll see that they did not add the symbol.

1981 was the last year that the stickers were issued on their own. As I mentioned in my previous post about the 1981 Fleer Baseball Card set, even though Fleer won the right to produce baseball cards, a later ruling gave Topps the sole right to be able to issue baseball cards with gum, so Fleer decided to use the logo stickers as an insert in place of the gum.

In honor of tonight’s All Star Game, here is the complete set of the 1981 Fleer All Star Game cards:

Note there is no card for 1945 as no All Star Game was played that year due to World War II.

Finally, here is a look at the wrapper:

This set marked the end of an era for Fleer as they would no longer issue Baseball Logo Stickers as their own product after having done so since 1967 starting with the Cloth Emblems (1967 – 1968), which were followed by Cloth Patches (1969 – 1976), which then became the Hi-Gloss Grand Slam stickers (1977 – 1979), and finally just Baseball Stickers (1980 – 1981). Starting the following year, the Logo Stickers would become Fleer’s standard insert in its baseball card packs for the next 10 years.

UPDATE: 

Thanks to this picture from Joe, it appears these stickers were also offered in rak packs containing 4 packs:

 

 

1981 Fleer Baseball Card Set

Before I cover the 1981 Fleer Baseball Stickers, I want to take a moment to remember the 1981 Fleer Baseball Card set given its historical significance of being the set that broke the Topps monopoly on baseball cards.

HISTORY:

1981 was the first time that Fleer was able to produce baseball cards with current major league baseball players since this set from 1963:

After Fleer produced the 1963 set, Topps won an injunction against Fleer from producing more baseball cards. Topps' contracts gave the company not only a monopoly on major league baseball players, but also the exclusive right to market baseball cards with gum or any other confectionery product. The courts upheld Topps' exclusive rights in the case, and Fleer was forced to stop producing baseball cards. As a result, Fleer sold its players' contracts to Topps in 1966.

In the late 1960s, the Players Association approached Fleer with an offer: for $600,000, Fleer would gain exclusive rights to market baseball cards starting in 1973 with gum, once Topps' contracts expired. Since that would still be many years away, Fleer did not want to wait that long, and turned down the offer.

In 1975, Fleer took Topps to court, filing an antitrust suit against Topps and the Players Association in an effort to get back into the baseball card business. It took almost 5 years for the case to make it to trial, but in 1980 Fleer was granted the right to produce baseball cards and was awarded $1 in damages. Fleer could now begin working on producing its first baseball card set in almost 20 years.


In a later court action, Topps retained the exclusive right to package its cards with gum, which led Fleer to start inserting the team logo stickers in packs instead of gum in 1982. As a result, 1981 was the only year that Fleer issued baseball cards with gum,


and 1981 was also the last year that Fleer sold Baseball Team Logo Stickers as their own release, since the logo stickers would replace gum starting in 1982 and there was no need to sell them separately.

THE BASEBALL CARD MARKET PRE 1981:

Fleer's return to baseball cards was greatly anticipated by collectors. For anyone who started collecting after 1981, it's hard to imagine what baseball card collecting was like prior to 1981. Collectors only had 1 set produced by Topps each year to collect. If you completed your Topps set you could work on the annual Kellogg's sets inserted in cereal boxes, or eat lots of Twinkies and Ho-Ho's to try to complete a set of the cards on the backs of Hostess products, but that really was about all you could find, other than maybe an occasional regional set like a Burger King Yankees set.

Once Fleer won their case against Topps, the collecting landscape changed completely. Since Donruss was quick to jump on the opportunity to get into the market given Fleer's victory, we had 3 different sets to complete in 1981!

I know this sounds like nothing to get exited about in 2008 when 3 new sets get released each week or so, but back then, this was the most amazing thing collectors could have ever imagined. You have to remember that before 1981, you usually only had 1 or maybe 2 cards of your favorite player released each year. Now we had the chance to get 3 or maybe even a couple of more.

Of course, like anything else, too much of a good thing can ultimately ruin it, which is where I'm afraid we find ourselves today with literally thousands of different cards produced for many star players which makes it all but impossible to complete many sets or have all the cards of your favorite player, but back then we were just excited to have the chance to collect more than one set and more than 1 card of our favorite players.

THE SET:

At the time, many people thought Fleer's 1981 release was the best of the 3 sets released.


Almost nobody was very pleased with the initial set produced by Donruss (given the very poor picture quality and the tissue thin card stock),

and reaction was mixed over the Topps design, with many people thinking it was not one of their better efforts, especially with the cap on the front of the card that didn't even have the team's logo but rather just the name of the team:

In fact, the 1982 Fleer Baseball wrapper mentions the 1981 set was ranked #1 by The Baseball Hobby News:


Besides the clean design, one of the things that many collectors liked about the Fleer set was that the cards were organized by team, as the cards were grouped by team in order of their 1980 record, with the World Series Champion Phillies leading off the set.

The thing that collectors didn't like was that the set was riddled with errors. Many of the errors were corrected over the course of the print run (there were 3 seperate printings) , but keeping up with the number of errors drove collectors crazy. One of the most sought after error cards in the set was the Graig Nettles card with his name mistakenly spelled with a "C"on the back:


I can remember wax boxes being sold at the time being identified by which print run they were from for collectors to determine whether they were buying the error cards or the corrected versions as many collectors were looking for "Craig" Nettles boxes.

In spite of the errors, the 1981 set was a very nice debut. Its hard to believe Fleer took such a major step backwards the next year after a promising initial offering with the universally panned 1982 set which has perhaps the worst picture quality of any set ever released, but they finally got back on course with their 1983 set and really hit their stride in 1984.

Because of its significance as being the set that Fleer wanted to produce that ultimately broke the Topps monopoly on the baseball card market, this set will always be one of my favorites. I have very fond memories of the Spring and Summer of 1981 building this set along with the Topps and Donruss sets, and remember how exciting it was to be a card collector at the time.

With the expansion in the number of card producers and collecting options, the hobby was getting ready for a wild ride ahead. The excesses (parallels, inserts, set proliferation, 1 of 1's, etc) which came as card makers continually tried to one up each other have caused the hobby to change dramatically were still many years away.

If Fleer hadn't decided to take on Topps back in 1975, its hard to say how many more years would have gone by before another company would have tried to enter the market. Its also an interesting question to consider how differently the hobby may have grown and evolved had Fleer not challenged Topps when it did.

Its a shame that the company that helped set the stage for the incredible growth the hobby experienced by breaking down the main barrier to entry into the market is no longer around.

In addition to baseball, they also revitalized the basketball card industry a few years later when they issued the 1986-1987 Basketball set with one of the most recognizable basketball cards of all time - Michael Jordan's rookie card:

Fleer created a lasting legacy in the sports card collecting world when they challenged Topps because they wanted to produce their own baseball card set. If Fleer had not wanted to produce cards that ultimately became the 1981 Fleer Baseball set, the hobby might look much different today.

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.

1980 Fleer Baseball Stickers & World Series Cards

The 1980 Fleer Baseball Sticker set was much different than the Grand Slam Hi-Gloss sets that had been issued from 1977 - 1979. Whereas the previous sets had 2 stickers per team (not counting the border color variations), the 1980 set had 4 different stickers per team:

Each team had 1) a logo sticker against a baseball diamond with the 1979 record information on the top, 2) another logo sticker against a colored background with the 1979 record information, 3) the very familiar cap monogram / team name sticker (the design which dates all the way the the 1969 cloth patches), and 4) a cap sticker.

In addition, the backs contained a card set depicting each World Series from 1940 through 1979. The artwork on most of the cards was from the 1971 Fleer World Series card set with artwork by R. G. Laughlin:


I'll cover the World Series card backs in more detail in my next post.

While each team had 4 different stickers, the Orioles and Pirates had a few extra variations.

The Orioles cap sticker can be found with a red or blue border:


and the Pirates can be found with a number of variations due to their 1979 World Series Championship:

The Pirates baseball diamond sticker can be found with their 1979 won - loss record and with the heading "1979 World Series". The colored border sticker can also be found with this variation as well as a border color variation. Finally, the cap sticker can be found with either a red or yellow border.

These are the only border variations in the set. Unlike the 1977 - 1979 sets, there are not colored border variations for each team except those I've just shown above.

The packs are green with a Houston Astros pitcher (looking suspiciously like Nolan Ryan who joined the team for the 1980 season):


The same design is used on the box:

Here is a look at the complete 1980 Fleer Baseball Sticker set including the variations:













The 1981 & 1982 designs are almost identical to the 1980 design except for the won - loss record at the tops of the stickers and the backs. I'll review these sets after I cover the 1980 Fleer World Series card set found on the back of the 1980 stickers.