Tuesday, July 11, 2017

1975 Fleer Pioneers


I bought this 28 card set at a card show a few months ago and had it sitting on my desk for awhile. I've tamed my scanner somewhat and figured I'd post a few of the cards. I had a couple of singles from the set that I bought way back when I began the first project of my second card collecting life. I was determined to have a card of every Hall of Fame player. Some of these were my 'placeholders' until I could get career contemporary cards. It didn't take me long to figure out that that project was going to be impossible both in cost and execution.

These cards were actually inserts in packs of a product I have no memory of, 'Baseball Patches'. In looking into these cards I found that Joe Shlabotnik and the Fleer Sticker Project have done the legwork previously. I'll defer to those two fine blogs. In fact it wasn't until I dug into the FSP blog the other day that my memory was jogged and I realized that I had several of the football versions of the patches in my Baltimore Colts collection. And I recognized the football version of this set as well.

Back to the cards at hand. As you'd expect the back has a write-up on the player.


These things are tall and narrow. Here is one scanned with a 2017 Topps for comparison.


Most, but not all, of the guys included in the checklist are Hall of Fame members.


Both the Cobb and Cy Young cards use familiar pics.


This one is my favorite.... Buck Ewing and the NY Giants' mascot. If the card's write-up is to be believed Buck always had the mascot spit on his bat when he went up to the plate. Well, OK.


A couple more.



I see that the set is available on eBay for between $15 and $18. Or you can go to Fritsch Cards and pay a bit more.

And finally the checklist:

1 Cap Anson
2 Harry Wright
3 Buck Ewing
4 A.G. Spalding
5 Hoss Radbourne
6 Dan Brouthers
7 Roger Bresnahan
8 Mike Kelly
9 Ned Hanlon
10 Ed Delahanty
11 Pud Galvin
12 Amos Rusie
13 Tommy McCarthy
14 Ty Cobb
15 John McGraw
16 Home Run Baker
17 Johnny Evers
18 Nap Lajoie
19 Cy Young
20 Eddie Collins
21 John Glasscock
22 Hal Chase
23 Mordecai Brown
24 Jake Daubert
25 Mike Donlin
26 John Clarkson
27 Buck Herzog
28 Art Nehf

3 comments:

  1. It is a nice set. Back in the day I had gotten some of the packs of the Baseball cloth stickers or "patches" as they call them now, and the Football stickers so I had a head start on this set, some years back I think before the internet I bought a complete set. I still have some dupes of the ones I originally had. I haven't gotten around to getting the full "Immortals of Football set(s) complete. I have a few of the '74 football and none of the '75 football. When I "completed" this set it felt real good. Been meaning to blog about it sometime. Guess when I do I'll have to try to link to this post & review.

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  2. I've thought about picking up this set in the past. Great way to add some old school legends. If I stumbled across a set in the $10 shipped range... I'd consider grabbing it.

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  3. commish..I collected these as a kid.. the Ewing was my favorite too..my grandpap knew a guy who owned a tavern in Pittsburgh and used to tell story about Old Hoss Radbourn..and how a mysterious shotgun "accident" shot half his face off..he also owned a tavern in Rhode Island ..I think... and would never show his face to anybody he used to lurk behind a curtain in a back room.He was a much loved ball player in his time but could not face his fans ..

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