Fleer issued sticker sets over most of the 1980's. After all, they were in competition with Topps and if Topps had stickers, Fleer did too.
These are the Cubs from Fleer's first year, 1981. The set has 128 players in it. The stickers were pealed off of regular sized cards. The front has the sticker while the back is the same as the regular Fleer baseball cards, except in different colors.
Fleer skipped a sticker set in 1982 but then came back in 1983 and that run continued until 1988. These are all the Cubs from 1983. The stickers were much smaller than in 1981, closer in size to the ones that Topps put out. The ten stickers (from a set of 296) is the most Cubs in any of the Fleer sets from the 80's.
We go from the most Cubs to the fewest, as the 1984 set included just a pair of Cubs.
Winning the division in 1984 meant more Cubs were included in 1985. Also notice that there were two stickers for Ryne Sandberg.
The 1986 set brought back the stickers on full-sized cards, like the 1981 design. Fleer stuck with this though the end of the run in 1988.
The number of Cubs dropped in 1987 by one, down to just five out of the 132 players.
The final set of Fleer stickers came out in 1988, and the Cubs number shrunk even lower, to just three of the 132 stickers.... but two of the three are Hall of Famers.
Bruce Sutter, a career 0.088 hitter, posing with a bat. Love it!
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ReplyDeleteI wonder if the Fleer ever produced albums for those 1983 to 1985 stickers. If so, I remember the Topps albums, but not Fleer. I do remember buying a few different packs of the Fleer Star Stickers though.
ReplyDelete1984 and 1985 both had sticker albums. You can find them on ebay, etc.
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