That’s a cool pennant Erik. I’ve never seen that one before

Is that a baseball with a dagger in its mouth? That is cool.

in Pirate parlance, it’s known as a “cutlass.” :cool:

That is FANTASTIC! Never saw it before either. WGN pennants underwent a significant style change in the late 50s. Probably just hired a new artist. And it’s interesting that they went back to tassels for it.

Like this guy, huh?

Question: When you get a pennant with a "squared off" spine, like the one on the right, do you think this is a factory thing or an alteration?

I wish I could have been a fly in the wall in these factories. And Marc, yeah a cool design element with a dagger.

I often wonder with scarcity (and condition and subject matter) driving value, if past owners or execs of these factories ever intentionally produced just a handful of certain pennant runs to restrict supply and increase value. That’s assuming they had the foresight to think of collectibility. I fantasize that a child / grandchild of the original owner or factory worker has a stash of one of a kind pennants nobody is aware of…

Hey, FB Rob....I never really took a deep dive into your football pennant website until last night. Wow! Great job. Ballpark, what percentage of the pennants pictured are yours?

Whoa, never ever seen that one. Not in monochrome or Day-Glo/polychrome.

It's definitely modeled on their '59 AL champs pennant for the White Sox, which was also monochrome. They just updated the artwork with a pirate theme.

No clue why it features tassels. :confused: By 1958 or so, WGN was using an outside maker to supply them with pennants: G.B. Feld Co. I strongly suspect this may be why it features tassels. With that said, the other two WGN/Feld pennants I've come across featured a clear "FELD CO. CHI." mark on them; which this Pirate pennant lacks.

Come to think of it ... one of the WGN/Feld pennants I'm referring to had tassels and was monochrome. It's the SMU pennant featured at the very end of my WGN post.

So, most likely this Pirate pennant was made by Feld (for WGN?), and they just omitted their mark from the artwork.

Definitely a factory thing. Some makers, I've noticed, cut their spines at an angle. Others didn't bother and left it squared, to save time.

If they were hand cut, that may explain why you see variations in style from one pennant to the next. Maybe the spine cutter was in a hurry to get to lunch that day?