Sure thing. The athletics is full sewn-on, no paint, except for the artwork on the logo. Three sets of tassels including in the middle of the wide end. Also pictured are a few others that didn't come up in earlier pics. Two more A's pennants with no paint, all stitched. I read that silk screening was patented in 1907 but not widely practiced until 1911. I wonder if that helps date them …

forgot this, sorry for part cut off …

WOW...Amazing stuff!! Those are beautiful.

Now excuse me...I'll just put myself in the corner with my pale little collection. :o

Two Giants pennants
 

I agree with Fballguy, Greg. Those are great.

I happen to have a question about series of pennants that (if I recall correctly) you collect. The pic below has two Giants pennants. I've had the one on the bottom (with the yellow felt spine) for a few years. It is somewhat larger that most pennants. It doesn't fit well into most toploaders (too thick at the tip and a bit too long... insert joke). I never really liked that the spine had taken on some black from the pennant and wondered if it was the original spine.

I picked up the one with the Orange spine this week, even with the tip damage. It is a rare pennant and I figured "what the heck... I like the orange spine better than the yellow." When it arrived, I noticed that it is smaller than my other copy and the spine has more sheen. It is, however, about the the same length as most modern pennants.

Both pennants have tip damage, which makes exact size somewhat of an estimate.

Upon receiving the second one, I wondered if it had been cut down in some way (beyond the tip). But the picture below has the pennants lined up using the image of the Giant. The yellow spine one clearly has more room between the image and the spine, suggesting that maybe it is just a bigger version.

I was wondering if the pennants in this series are known with different types of material on the spine and if they differ in size. I'd also be curious to see other versions of this same pennant (I know you have one Rob).

It certainly wasn't an exact science back then. I think they just took whatever lots of felt were available at the time (or for the best price), and then went to town. The material was relatively cheap, and likely had some variances from shipment to shipment.

Regarding the size variance, there's a good chance that the image was simply printed a little further down on the pennant, in the case of the second one. That would explain the larger gap between the spine an the graphics. You may say that the first one is still larger... but the second one is clearly altered/trimmed, so we don't really know how big it was in its original state.

Tough to put these shadowy thoughts in writing, but hopefully you get the gist of it. Pennants of this era were not cut with precision, like cards or team-issued photos. Some of these pennants came from street vendors who probably never even got inside the stadium. So there were some definite potential variances. I have lots of unaltered duplicates from the 1940s - 50s that differ in size quite a bit (just like your Giants example).

Eager to hear others' thoughts as well!

Greg...

Thanks for posting those... the Athletics Pennants are off the charts cool. In the very early days, I think even the Tigers took a back seat to the A's with their White Elephant Mascot. I bet that a couple of those pennants could be lone survivors. Great stuff!

Just curious Mark...What leads you to believe it was trimmed? I thought the tip looked artificially sharp but being felt maybe it just wore down that way. Anything else?

Thanks guys …. yes this is my favorite series and yes, they seem to come in different sizes, almost as much as two inches. I have a Boston Braves with a true pointy tip that is smallish, and a Brooklyn Dodgers that is larger with a blunt tip (seemingly made that way). I'll get some pics for you. Those Giants pennants are awesome and very rare … the series seems to date to 1951-53 (due to the Cubs anniversary pennant and Dodgers NL Champs) but there's a Milwaukee Braves pennant that uses the same logo. So I guess some vendors continued some designs for a few years.

Speaking of these I saw a STL Cards pennant surface on eBay a few weeks ago in a small lot, and I debated getting it, but it was soiled pretty bad. I am still looking for both STL teams, one of our infrequent posters here would have me over a barrel if he ever wanted to sell his Browns.

Additionally, these pennants were made with tassels and a thicker spine - at least some teams were. I have Cubs and NY Giants.

I will say, since I initially got these pennants for display, because I like the artwork, I have never been a big stickler for the tip being perfect. I do know that many pennants were made with a slightly squared off tip, I have a Brooklyn Emmet Kelly pennant that is so big it barely fits in the holder and it looks like its missing another 1/2 inch with a squared tip. I agree with Mark, I think quality control was lacking with these things.

I noticed this even with the Collegiate pennants which were probably the highest-end made back then. My Yankees pennant seems to have Uncle Sam very close to the spine, much more so than on the two or three others I've seen (including your new pickup). It looks like a difference of almost a whole inch or so. But then there is more room to spare by the tip. It's just imperfection in printing or cutting I guess, like on mine the whole design was moved to the left.

Yeah.... the guy in charge of cutting and screening these was probably making about 35 cents per hour. Some are amazingly exact and consistent, but others have some definite variance.

Since these pennants cost under a buck back in the day, I don't think the attention to detail was always stellar. But that's part of why I love them so much. They're all just a bit different, and oozing with personality. Today's "stiff as a board" pennants are all precisely the same size, but that's not much fun, is it? And today's boring/generic/corporate logos cannot hold a candle to those of the past!