![]() ![]() 1981 Fleer Baseball
Collector's were excited when they heard Fleer was re-entering the
baseball card market. Their prior issues, the 1959 Fleer Ted Williams
set and their 1963 Fleer baseball-Star sets were hgue succeses.
What did they have up their sleeve ???
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1981 Fleer Baseball Checklist, Values & Info
The answer was NOTHING ! What a mess. Awful ! Poorly printed on medicore card stock, the images were even worse. Then to cap it off, Fleer introduced tons of errors into their set. Some think it was done on purpose to force collector's to keep collecting. Nearly all were useless. The only one to draw much attention was the Graig Nettles variations. One had his name spelled Craig on back. WOW !!!
TOP ROOKIES: Hall-of-Famers Tim Raines and Harold Baines. Oother rookies of note were Danny Ainge, later a pro with the Boston Celtics and World Series hero Kirk Gibson. Note: You may be on that page right now. |
Auction's most costly vintage baseball cards![]() ![]() ![]() ![]()
The history of vintage baseball card auctions is long and colorful.
Over 5,000 vintage sports and non-sports items in each weekly auction
T-206 Honus Wagner tobacco cards have sold for upto $2.8 million in
auction. The "Holy Grail of Sports Cards", it's extreme-high auction
value can mostly be attributed to great PR and "auction fever".
It's not close to being the rarest baseball card and Honus Wagner is not
Babe Ruth or Mickey Mantle. Yes, the T-206 set is beautiful & special but
because of the # of cards and scarcities, few collector's try to complete,
which should keep auction competition down compared to say 1933 Goudey
or 1952 Topps baseball card issues. There's a story Wagner banned his card because he was anti-tobacco but there are other stories about financial considerations. You surely have heard of PSA and may even know that this card was the FIRST they ever graded. But did you know that dealer (B.l. .ast.o name encoded) admitted tampering with the card, perhaps having it trimmed down to size, before PSA graded it so highly for the auction.
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High Numbers - vintage cards were issued in the ‘50s-‘70s in a series. During the baseball season, the largest number of cards were made. As the schedule progressed into September, when there would be less interest in baseball cards , Topps for one, specifically decreased production and hence much less product was available. As a result, a scarcity-factor was created and a premium holds for these first type of "short-printed" cards.
Inserts - special randomly-inserted cards which are not part of the regular set. Many modern inserts are sequentially-numbered and rarer than the card sets into which they are inserted.
O-Pee-Chee / OPC - a subsidiary of Topps, this card issue was produced specifically for distribution in Canada.
Promotional Card - generally referred to as cards issued to show what the product will look like on release and intended to help spur future sales. Often called a "promo" card.
Reprint - cards issued to reproduce the originals. With the current trend of vintage reprints, the new versions have a distinguishing characteristic evidenced by numbering.
Restored - a card or piece of memorabilia which someone has tried to return to a "like-new" condition. A restored card is considered to be of very little value.
Rookie Card - any league-licensed, widely distributed card to feature a player in his first year of trading cards.