1978 Fleer Hi-Gloss Grand Slam Baseball Stickers

(Update: After reading through an updated post on Fler Sticker Project, I realized I had the 1978 version, not the '77. Dates have been changed in this post to reflect the correct year)

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I saw a post about these (here) on the Fleer Sticker Project blog, and knew I had to snag some of these stickers. A quick search on theBay, and I found two packs that I quickly snagged up. The pack is yellow with blue and red lettering with white "highlights" on it. There are "examples" of the Royals and Yankees stickers, plus the MLB logo. In the lower right corner, the pack proudly proclaims that there is "1 Stick Gum." (Evidently, the writers back then spent a lot of time watching The Lone Ranger...)

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Upon opening the pack, we find a THIRTY year old piece of gum that had attached itself to the sticker behind it. The gum is weirdly semi-moist and not in the least dried out that I can tell. After airing out a few moments, though, it's dry, yet surprisingly bendable. Or, well, it was... It bent pretty well before finally cracking, though never crumbling....

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Ah, the gum was attached to the Philadelphia Phillies sticker! I believe I could let the card air out and then use my thumbnail to scrape off the residue. The card contains the logo of the time for the Phillie taking up most of the real estate (2/3's or so), then the classic Phillies "script" occupies the lower third of the card. There are instructions as to where to peel the sticker (evidently, those of us that were kids when these were made were not the brightest lights in the sockets). There is also the Fleer "crown" logo. The back contains a puzzle piece. On this particular card, the piece is obviously a corner because the red and blue stripes make a 90-degree turn. There is a patch of Green with what appears to be light dirt in one corner of the piece. I am not going to describe the backs of all the stickers, just this one, so you can get an idea of what we have on each item.

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The Cincy sticker is different that the Phillies, and if you take a trip over to the Fleer Sticker Project, you will get the low-down on all the variations that were made of these things. This one has that classic 70's red, orange, yellow "rainbow" effect seen often on sports shows (or the Brady Bunch or the Partridge Family or Match Game or the Michael Douglas Show, etc etc). Attached to that is the Reds logo. Once again, Fleer helps us idiots by showing us how to remove the sticker. Notice this sticker also says "Grand Slam Hi-Gloss Stickers" on it. Guess you have to fill up the space with SOMETHING...

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Next, we have the LOWERCASE "A" of the 70's Braves. Perhaps Dayf can provide for us the year when they changed over to the capital version of the letter... In any case, the 'scripted' text is done in Braves blue with red borders.

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The Cardinals sticker follows the pattern of the Phillies (and I suppose technically the Braves), though it appears the logo with the birds has been set crooked, or something... I don't quite get the canted look. It's not really 'off-center' like a printing mistake, but more like they weren't sure how to fit the logo in the allotted space. Strange.

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Finally, we have a Twins sticker. They opted to use a barely visible pink that graduates up to a magenta. I can't help but wonder if this card was originally RED. The Minnesota hand-shake logo takes up the bottom portion of the sticker. On the left, we're told there is a "World Series Photo Puzzle on back." Sure enough, I even got "Worl" and the top portion of the what I think is the word "Cham" - hmm, maybe we were idiots back then... :-)

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Being as I ordered two of these packs, I'll post the 2nd pack another time...

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