The History of Fleer Baseball Cards

The following is a brief history of Fleer Baseball cards in response to readers' inquiries aabout the now defunct company.

Fleer's company history dates back to 1849 when Frank H. Fleer began a bubble gum business. In 1923, Fleer released its first trading card series featuring 120 sports celebrities, including Babe Ruth, to help sell its gum.

Fleer first challenged the Topps baseball card monopoly in 1959 when it signed Ted Williams to an exclusive contract and issued the "Ted Williams" Baseball Card Set, chronicling the Red Sox great's Hall of Fame career. Fleer effectively broke the Topps dynasty in 1981 by securing a license to produce a major league baseball card set and opening the door for Donruss, Upper Deck, and other companies to issue baseball cards.

Fleer made its biggest hobby impact in the mid '80s. In 1984, Fleer was the only manufacturer to release a Roger Clemens card, which was featured in the 1984 Fleer Update Set. The set also included the first licensed card of Kirby Puckett. In 1986 Fleer revived the basketball industry by releasing the 1986-87 Fleer Basketball Set featuring Michael Jordan's rookie card.

Despite Fleer's rich tradition and tremendous impact on the hobby, the company will hardly be missed once the dust settles. The remaining high impact manufacturers -- Topps and Upper Deck -- continue to produce a wide variety of affordable base sets and costly high-end sets that satisfy the needs of most collectors. In fact, Upper Deck has purchased the Fleer brand name and the recently released the 2006 Fleer Baseball Set (Upper Deck style), which includes many of the same insert sets that made Fleer popular with set builders.

In a saturated market, it was inevitable that one of the key players would be dropped from the roster and that player turned out to be Fleer.