Fleer

The Fleer company was started by Frank H. Fleer in Philadelphia, 1885, as a confectionery business. Well established as a gum and candy company, Fleer predated many of its competitors into the business of issuing sports cards with its 1923 release of baseball cards in its "Bobs and Fruit Hearts" candy product. These rare cards are basically the same as the 1923 W515 strip cards but are machine cut and have a printed ad for the candy company on the back. Many years later in 1959 it signed baseball star Ted Williams to a contract and sold an 80-card set oriented around highlights of his career. Fleer was unable to include other players because rival company Topps had signed most active baseball players to exclusive contracts.

Williams was nearing the end of his career and retired after the 1960 season. Fleer continued to produce baseball cards by featuring Williams with other mostly retired players in a Baseball Greats series. One set was produced in 1960 and a second in 1961. The company did not produce new cards the next year, but continued selling the 1961 set while it focused on signing enough players to produce a set featuring active players in 1963. This 67-card set included a number of stars, including 1962 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. Topps still held the rights to most players and the set was not particularly successful.

Meanwhile, Fleer took advantage of the emergence of the American Football League (AFL) in 1960 to begin producing football cards. Fleer produced a set for the AFL while Topps cards covered the established National Football League. In 1961, 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 1964, Philadelphia Gum secured the rights for NFL cards and Topps took over the AFL.

Sometime after 1961 Fleer produced The Three Stooges' cards.

The Fleer family, Frank Fleer's descendants, sold Fleer in 1989 for just under US$70,000,000 to John W. Fleer and Charter House Investments. John W. Fleer retained majority ownership in the company. Fleer was pushing into retail chains like Rite Aid, which brought the ire of the hobby dealers in the early 1990s.

Comic book company Marvel Entertainment purchased the company on July 24, 1992, for US$540 million. Marvel purchased another card company, SkyBox International, on March 8, 1995, for $150 million. Fleer/Skybox reduced its push into retail chains to start its Hobby Bullpen program that committed the company to support and provide relief for hobby dealers and collectors.

Marvel entered bankruptcy in 1996 along with its subsidiaries. Fleer was directly hurt by the 1994 Major League Baseball strike and prolonged lockouts in the NBA. In June 1997, Marvel formed its Marvel Enterprise division, headed by president and CEO Scott C. Marden, to manage its trading card and sticker businesses, as well as Marvel Interactive, an Internet-entertainment and software-publishing company.

Fleer was placed on the market by Marvel at an asking price of $30 million. Fleer exited bankruptcy, along with the rest of the Marvel group, on October 1, 1998. In February 1999, Fleer/Skybox was sold to a corporation owned by Alex Grass and his son Roger.

Legal battles

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. A hearing examiner ruled against Topps in 1965, but the 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. Fleer chose not to pursue such options and instead sold its remaining player contracts to Topps for $395,000 in 1966 ($3,344,211.42 in 2021 dollars). The decision gave Topps an effective monopoly of the baseball card market.

In 1968, 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 1973, when many of Topps's contracts would expire. Since this was so far in the future, Fleer declined the proposal.

Fleer returned to the union in September 1974 with a proposal to sell 5-by-7-inch satin patches of players, somewhat larger than normal baseball cards. 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 1975, 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 Topps monopoly on baseball cards was finally broken by a lawsuit decided by federal judge Clarence Charles Newcomer in 1980, in which the judge ended Topps's exclusive right to sell baseball cards with gum, allowing Fleer to compete in the market. 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 1981. Fleer's legal victory was overturned after one season, but the company continued to manufacture cards, substituting stickers with team logos for gum.