Fleer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The Fleer Corporation, founded by Frank H. Fleer in 1. 88. 5, was the first company to successfully manufacture bubblegum; it remained a family- owned enterprise until 1. Fleer originally developed a bubblegum formulation called Blibber- Blubber in 1. However, while this gum was capable of being blown into bubbles, in other respects it was vastly inferior to regular chewing gum, and Blibber- Blubber was never marketed to the public. In 1. 92. 8, Fleer employee Walter Diemer improved the Blibber- Blubber formulation to produce the first commercially successful bubblegum, Dubble Bubble. Its pink color set a tradition for nearly all bubble gums to follow. Fleer became known as a maker of sports cards, and has also produced some non- sports trading cards. In 1. 99. 5, Fleer acquired the trading card company Sky. Box International and, over Thanksgiving vacation shuttered its Philadelphia plant (where Dubble Bubble was made for 6. In 1. 99. 8, 7. 0- year- old Dubble Bubble was acquired by Canadian company Concord Confections; Concord, in turn, was acquired by Chicago- based Tootsie Roll Industries in 2. In late May 2. 00. Shop a Huge selection of Trading Cards at Low Prices. Boxes, Cases, and Packs of Sports and Gaming Cards. Free Shipping on Orders over $199. How to Value Skybox Trading Cards. Do you have an old box of Skybox trading cards you found in a closet? Or do you want to sell a collection of trading cards you've. Buy and sell your outdoor gear on Lake-Link's Trading Post Classifieds. Get your items in front of the eyeballs of tens of thousands of outdoor enthusiasts. The most. Fleer was suspending its trading card operations immediately. By early July, in a move similar to declaring bankruptcy, the company began to liquidate its assets to repay creditors. The move included the auction of the Fleer trade name, as well as other holdings. Competitor Upper Deck won the Fleer name, as well as their die cast toy business, at a price of $6. Just one year earlier, Upper Deck tendered an offer of $2. Fleer based on the hope that the sports card market would turn in a direction more favorable to their licenses and target collector demographic. One negative aspect associated with Fleer's Assignment for the Benefit of Creditors is that many sports card collectors now own redemption cards for autographs and memorabilia that may not be able to be redeemed; those fears were somewhat quenched in early 2. History[edit]The Fleer company was started by Frank H. Fleer in 1. 9th century Philadelphia as a confectionery business.[1]Early attempts at sports cards[edit]Well established as a gum and candy company, Fleer predated many of its competitors into the business of issuing sports cards with its 1. Bobs and Fruit Hearts" candy product. These rare cards are basically the same as the 1. W5. 15 strip cards but are machine cut and have a printed ad for the candy company on the back. Many years later in 1. Ted Williams to a contract and sold an 8. Fleer was unable to include other players because another company, Topps, had signed most active baseball players to exclusive contracts. Williams was nearing the end of his career and retired after the 1. However, Fleer continued to produce baseball cards by featuring Williams with other mostly retired players in a Baseball Greats series. One set was produced in 1. The company did not produce new cards the next year, but continued selling the 1. This 6. 7- card set included a number of stars, including 1. National League MVP Maury Wills (then holder of the modern record for stolen bases in a season), who had elected to sign with Fleer instead of Topps. Wills and Jimmy Piersall served as player representatives for Fleer, helping to bring others on board. However, Topps still held onto the rights of most players and the set was not particularly successful. Meanwhile, Fleer took advantage of the emergence of the American Football League in 1. Fleer produced a set for the AFL while Topps cards covered the established National Football League. In 1. 96. 1, each company produced cards featuring players from both leagues. The next year reverted to the status quo ante, with Fleer covering the AFL and Topps the NFL. In 1. 96. 4, however, Philadelphia Gum secured the rights for NFL cards and Topps took over the AFL. Legal battles[edit]This left Fleer with no product in either baseball or football. The company now turned its efforts to supporting an administrative complaint filed against Topps by the Federal Trade Commission. The complaint focused on the baseball card market, alleging that Topps was engaging in unfair competition through its aggregation of exclusive contracts. The Upper Deck Company, LLC (colloquially as Upper Deck and Upper Deck Authenticated, Ltd. in the UK), founded in 1988, is a private company primarily known for.A hearing examiner ruled against Topps in 1. Commission reversed this decision on appeal. The Commission concluded that because the contracts only covered the sale of cards with gum, competition was still possible by selling cards with other small, low- cost products. However, Fleer chose not to pursue such options and instead sold its remaining player contracts to Topps for $3. The decision gave Topps an effective monopoly of the baseball card market. In 1. 96. 8, Fleer was approached by the Major League Baseball Players Association, a recently organized players' union, about obtaining a group license to produce cards. The MLBPA was in a dispute with Topps over player contracts, and offered Fleer the exclusive rights to market cards of most players starting in 1. Topps's contracts would expire. Since this was so far in the future, Fleer declined the proposal. Fleer returned to the union in September 1. By now, the MLBPA had settled its differences with Topps and reached an agreement that gave Topps a right of first refusal on such offers. Topps passed on the opportunity, indicating that it did not think the product would be successful. The union, also fearing that it would cut into existing royalties from Topps sales, then rejected the proposal. In April 1. 97. 5, Fleer asked for Topps to waive its exclusive rights and allow Fleer to produce stickers, stamps, or other small items featuring active baseball players. Topps refused, and Fleer then sued both Topps and the MLBPA to break the Topps monopoly. After several years of litigation, the court ordered the union to offer group licenses for baseball cards to companies other than Topps. Fleer and another company, Donruss, were thus allowed to begin making cards in 1. Fleer's legal victory was overturned after one season, but the company continued to manufacture cards, substituting stickers with team logos for gum. Bill Ripken[edit]In 1. Bill Ripken's Fleer card showed him holding a bat with the expletivefuck face written in plain view on the knob of the bat.[2] Fleer subsequently rushed to correct the error, and in its haste, released versions in which the text was scrawled over with a marker, whited out with correction fluid, and also airbrushed. On the final, corrected version, Fleer obscured the offensive words with a black box (this was the version included in all factory sets). Both the original card and many of the corrected versions have become collector's items as a result. There are at least ten different variations of this card. As of February 2. Bay for asking prices as high as $1,2. Years later, Ripken admitted to having written the expletive on the bat; however, he claimed he did it to distinguish it as a batting practice bat, and did not intend to use it for the card.[2]Some collectors list the card as the "Rick Face" card. The script on the bat appears to make the word fuck look similar to Rick.[4]Key Trading Card sets[edit]Fleer produced two benchmark trading cards in the 1. In 1. 98. 4, Fleer was the only major trading card manufacturer to release a Roger Clemens card; they included the then- Boston Red Sox prospect in their 1. Fleer Baseball Update Set. The 1. 98. 4 update set also included the first licensed card of Hall Of Fame outfielder Kirby Puckett. Fleer also released factory sets of their baseball cards from 1. Like the Topps factory sets, they came in colorful boxes for retail and plainer boxes for hobby dealers. The 1. 98. 6 was not sealed, but the 1. In 1. 98. 6 Fleer helped resurrect the basketball card industry by releasing the 1. Fleer Basketball set which included the Rookie Cards of Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley. This set is seen by many basketball card collectors as the "1. Topps of basketball."In the late 1. Fleer produced for their 1. Topps Tiffany sets) became very popular in the hobby. However, that popularity wore off, and today, the sets (except for the rare 1. Fleer's Ultra set, which in some years was actually been released earlier than its regular Fleer (Tradition) set. The 1. 99. 1 set had an announced production of 1. Fleer and this set was produced on higher quality card stock and used silver ink, just like Donruss' Leaf set starting the previous year. The 1. 99. 2 set used UV coating on both sides and gold foil stamping on the front, which was among the most beautiful sets of that year. Ultra and regular Fleer sets began another tradition of offering an insert card in every pack and the next year started another tradition called "hot packs" (where about 1: 7. An assortment of the easier to find insert cards and not the rare 1: 3. Still another tradition that continues today is the Ultra Gold Medallion parallel insert set, which started in 1. These are inserted one per pack. In 1. 99. 7, Ultra introduced the Platinum Medallion insert set which is traditionally serial numbered to 1. The following year, 1. Ultra Masterpieces, which are one of ones. Gold/Platinum sets. Fleer's super premium flagship set, called Flair, began production in 1. Ultra. Its trademark was that it was printed on very thick card stock (about twice the thickness of regular cards), used a unique glossy finish along with six color printing. The "packs" are done by shrink wrapping the cards (usually ten in a "pack") and then placing them in a shrink- wrapped "mini- box" instead of the usual mylar foil packs used on virtually all trading card products today. The 1. 99. 7 Flair Showcase set included the first one- of- one cards for any major sport called "Masterpieces"; they paralleled the more common, or "base", Row 2, Row 1 and Row 0 sets. Acquisitions[edit]The Mustin family, Frank Fleer descendants, sold Fleer in 1. US$7. 0 million to Paul Mullan and Charter House Investments. How to Value Skybox Trading Cards.
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