I have this pennant, but mine does not have a tag on the back. Leads me to believe this is most likely correct.

This is funny. I’ve not seen this repro before, but it has all the tell tale signs of a Mitchell and Ness. Tassles, placement, stitching, etc. weird. I have bought and sold 3 or 4 of the original pennant over the years. There was a small find of them in a trunk in MA (I think) many years ago that were sold on eBay. They’re the most common of the early pennants, but still incredibly beautiful.

Thanks for the info, Jason...

Yes, I've always thought that one (the original undated and oversized version) is the most "common" of all the oversized teens pennants. Makes sense that there was a small find, as lots of them are NRMT-MT condition.

That's right. The maker sewed the retailer's/distributor's/concessionaire's label on, for them, during the manufacturing process. They would have done this for any retailer that ordered a particularly high volume of pennants from them, at wholesale prices, of course.

I had always thought Trench was the first maker to do this; but, as you'll see in my last post, actually, The Reproduction Co. was the first, as they happily sewed Spalding's label on collegiate and baseball pennants they made and supplied the Chicago-based company with.

I was sort of familiar with reproduction co from the baseball pennants, but did not know about the early football pennants and others, or the role that this company played in modernizing pennants. Really enjoyed reading your piece Kyle.

Also, I noticed that, for me, the pennant fever link at the bottom of your posts doesn't take me to your webapge. I get some kind of error. Not sure If I'm the only one. I find it by searching pennant fever on google. The pennant factory one works fine.

Same here.... The first link won't work for me either. Probably an easy fix that is beyond my tech expertise.

Same. It’s not you, Mark. It probably wouldn’t ever work for Bart.

"IDIOT." :eek:

That's what I get for putting a semi-colon in my signature block (touching the hyperlink).

Thanks for pointing that out, guys.

Additionally, I thanked a few of you privately for letting me use images of pennants you either own or shared on your websites, channels, etc. in my last piece. Now, let me publicly thank you:

Mark S./YouTube: TheStuffOfGreatness (perezfan)
Rob G./feltfootball.com (fballguy)
Matt Z./ebay: pennantdynasty
Keith J./Youtube: VintageSportsFlips (mrkrab)

...And anyone else on the thread that shared a photo I used, but forgot to credit. My apologies. But thank you just the same.

To those that read my last piece on Reproduction Co., and made it to the end, thank you. Look for the above contributors' pennant cameos somewhere in there--I promise, they're there.

Here is a recent pickup. I bought a lot of 47 different (mostly travel) pennants to get this one Billy Ball pennant. It is surprisingly hard to find. I know that at least a few of you also appreciate these types of early 1980s rarities.

If you were around the Bay Area in the early 1980s, you can probably still hear the radio jingle in your head "Billy Ball, A's baseball, why's everybody always picking on me?"

Also known as the Shooty Babbit era … lol