1987 marked the sixth year Fleer produced professional baseball trading cards. In this landmark year, Fleer released innovative team logo designs on stickers that could be collected and traded separately from the base card sets. These 1987 Fleer baseball team logo stickers gained widespread popularity among young collectors and fueled the trading card craze of the late 1980s.

For 1987, Fleer released two main baseball card sets- the base 400 card regular issue set as well as a 100 card Traded set highlighting players who were traded to new teams in the offseason. Both sets featured the standard player/statistic card fronts and glossy color team photos on the backs. It was the addition of peal-off team logo stickers that really captured the attention of collectors that year.

Each wax pack of 1987 Fleer baseball cards contained one random team logo sticker out of the 26 Major League franchises at the time. The sticker designs featured bold, colorful team logos arranged within a distinctive border design resembling home plate. This unique graphic treatment allowed the stickers to be easily identified, displayed, and swapped apart from the card sets themselves. Immediately, kids began swapping and collecting these logos like never before with baseball teams.

Certain logos from popular national brands like the New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox, and Los Angeles Dodgers were considered more coveted and harder to obtain. Meanwhile, stickers from lesser known smaller market clubs tended to accumulate with collectors waiting to swap them away. The stickers ignited baseball card enthusiasts’ desire to fully complete their logo sticker collections, fueling unprecedented levels of trading between peers.

Within months of the 1987 release, the stickers grew so popular among the core baseball card collecting audience that Fleer brought them back again later that same year in a special 47 card Logos set sold exclusively in wax packs featuring only team logo stickers. By 1988 they doubled down releasing Logos series I and II containing new sticker designs that incorporated elements from that year’s card designs to maintain interest.

The introduction of the peel-off team logos had wide-ranging impacts. It gave kids a new item to collect, display, and trade apart from the cards. This spurred greater transactional activity and social engagement between collectors. The logos’ graphic simplicity and recognizability worked well as standalone promotional items too. Sporting goods stores soon sold logo sheets on their own to attract new collectors and fans. Schools even sold logos to raise funds for activities.

While the sticker fad only lasted a few years into the early 90s before collectors outgrew them, the 1987 Fleer baseball logos are still widely remembered nostalgically today as a defining innovation that took the collectibility and mystique of sports cards to new heights. Whether displayed in school lockers, stuck to notebooks, or swapped furiously between young hands, these logos brought the excitement of America’s pastime directly into the hands of a whole new generation of fans. Their impact reinforced Fleer as a leader in the vibrant, growing baseball card market and culture during the sport’s late 80s renaissance period.

For modern collectors, 1987 Fleer logos maintain popularity as a desired subset within complete vintage card/sticker collections. sealed Logos packs still surface occasionally at card shows and auctions. But most significantly, the simple stickers ignited an entirely new dimension of enthusiasm around collecting sports brands/identities outside of player stats that impacted the broader memorabilia industry for decades to come. The 1987 Fleer baseball team logo stickers left an indelible mark as one of the most innovative and impactful specialty sports collectibles ever produced that continues to be cherished nostalgically by many to this day.