1968-72 Fleer Cloth Stickers - Surprised at the market for these.

[Fleerfan]

Thanks for the shout out to the Fleer Sticker Project blog. Its always great to hear from another Fleer collector.

You are correct that there really isn't an authoritative listing of all the variations of the cloth patches that were made from 1969 through 1977 (and then continued on until 1991 with stickers), which is why I started the blog.

I remember getting these patches as a kid in the mid 1970's, and then in the early 2000's I decided it would be fun to put together a full set. I didn't realize what I was getting into.

After picking up lots on ebay, I realized as you point out that there were differences (sometimes subtle, sometimes obvious). I started chatting with some other collectors and found out they had other variations I hadn't seen, so I started documenting what I had come across to help me list what was out there to document my collection and share that information with other collectors, as well as see if I got any feedback on other variations I wasn't aware of.

Collecting Fleer items is definitely a niche that doesn't necessarily attract a lot of collectors, but those who collect do seem to know what is scare once they've been collecting for awhile.

I think part of the appeal is driven by the fact that there was a 9 year period (actually 11 if you count the tall boys from 1967 & 1968) where Fleer was making the cloth patches, so whether you started collecting in 1969 or 1977, you probably remember the cloth patches.

As for the high prices for the harder to find items, unlike baseball cards, these were meant to be used by sticking the patches on your clothes, notebooks, etc., so most of these would have been destroyed. The fact that these even survive (especially from the 60's) is amazing to me.

Congrats on getting down to only needing 4. Which ones are you still looking for?

Originally Posted by darkhorse9

I have been working on a master set of the Fleer cloth emblem stickers for a couple years now and I'm a bit surprised that there seems to be a real market for these.

Everyone one remembers those. Fleer made two peel off stickers for each team every year. Quite often Fleer would make a change to the team's logo some how. Often it was a very minute and almost imperceptible change unless you were looking for it. Sometimes it was just a color shading difference, other times it was a subtle adjustment.

There are 148 different variations and I am down to just needing four of them. They pop up on ebay every now and then, but the bidding for the harder to find ones is often through the roof. I'm stunned that there are people out there that (A)-Care about these and (B)- know which ones are hard to find.

You've got to really know your stuff to even notice when they pop up. There's a web site called the Fleer Sticker Project that did a good job of listing most of the variations. But other than that there's no real listing elsewhere when the casual collector would find it.