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Originally Posted by UKCardGuy
Thanks Jason. My questions about the Tigers pennant were down to the quality of it's construction. The uneven cut, the wavy stitching on the spine stood out to me. but the font and the tigers head looked good to me. The fact that the listing mentioned homemade and not hand-made, was another question for me.
I'd like to be educated about the early manufacturing processes if anyone has insight. For early pennants like Greg's Cubs and White Sox examples, I'm guessing these have been made on some sort of manufacturing process even if that was a single room in a shop somewhere? Sewing machines were in wide use by 1905 so I'm guessing these wouldn't have been hand stitched. Is that correct?
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Put me in the camp that thinks the Tigers pennant is genuine and unaltered.
Although I understand the temptation for unscrupulous sellers to doctor their collectibles, when it comes to pennants, I think that occurs far less frequently than we all think. The earliest pennants, say from ca. 1910s, were mostly hand made. The felt was cut by hand with scissors using crude templates; then sewn together at lightning speed by a seamstress using a sewing machine. There was variation from one pennant to the next.
For those makers that screen printed their pennants, you saw similar inconsistencies. Sometimes the stencil carrier was in perfect register; and sometimes, not so much. When secondary colors were applied using an airbrush, you saw even more variations. Nobody really cared about quality control, so most of these "inferior" products were sold with the very best of their stock.
For instance, I often hear collectors ID a pennant's tip as doctored because the graphics don't quite line up with the center axis of the pennant. Sure, that's possible ... but more likely: the stencil was not in perfect register with the felt when they screened it. Having screen printed one or two pennants, I can tell you from experience this is really easy to do.
Blunted or squared tips? Yeah, the consumer could've caused this; but, just as likely the pennant left the factory that way on account of the screen printer placing their stencil too close to the edge of the felt roll.
With this Tigers pennant, note that it's of two-piece construction. That means the felt cutter had to get the top and bottom slope/angles of
both pieces just right for the pennant to fit correctly. I think he/she may have missed the mark on one piece is all. If I had to guess, he/she cut the orange head-end too short; then tried to alter the black tail-end midway through the cut so it would come together better.