1963 Fleer Baseball Cards

When I was a kid growing up and collecting baseball cards, the only company making cards was Topps. Now , so many different companies make cards you can’t keep up with them.

However, prior to their current run of cards from 1981, Fleer made some baseball card sets, primarily during the 1960’s.

In 1959, they produced an 80 card set on Ted Williams. In 1960 and 1961, they produced sets of cards featuring retired players. Here is card #21 of Howard Ehmke from the 1961 set.




In 1963, Fleer issued a set of 67 cards of current baseball players. The cards were issued with a cherry cookie! This resulted in damages to many cards. Here is the wrapper the cards came in.


Here is the card of Willie Mays, #5 in the set.



The big coup for Fleer was they had the first card issued of Maury Wills. Wills was not considered a top prospect by Topps in the late 1950s so they did nit sign him to a contract. When Wills made it to the majors, he snubbed them but did sign with Fleer. It didn't hurt that he was the National League's Most Valuable Player in 1962. Here is his card, #43 in the set.





As the set was released, Fleer wanted to include a checklist card. The cards were printed in sheets of 66, so, in the final print run, card #46, Joe Adcock was replaced by a checklist card. I love this short printed checklist card. Here is the one from my collection.