Put aside resale value, this mid/late 60s Angels is one of the most beautiful pennants Trench ever made for any team, IMO. The artwork just screams 1960s.

I do love that period artwork. This particular pennant/logo always reminds me of growing up in the early 80’s as my folks took me and my brother from campground to campground - thanks Good Sam Camping Club… probably why I wanted to sell most of my Angels pennants tbh [emoji23]
https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...196a843ff7.jpg

Damn, Greg! That baby is minty mint! Like most of your stuff. :cool:

I forget where I got it but, yeah, the original owner kept it stored in an atlas or something. I still have the pennants I owned as a 6-7 year old and they look almost shredded from years of being moved around and torn off walls …

I know these pennants are rather new for this forum (and it may be too much football all at once), but I thought some of you may find them interesting. I won the Ronnie Lott on ebay last week. I collect 49ers pennants, but never even knew that this existed. I had seen the Montana before in a collection, but never for sale. I did a bunch of searching through worthpoint and came up with the following examples. All seem to be very, very rare, with each having, at most, two sales. They all say "1982 NFL Properties" on them.

I'm curious to know if anyone has any of these, if there are other players, etc.

I've also wondered if the 1982 strike somehow kept them off the market.

I also want Kyle to decide that he needs to figure out who made them and how they were sold. NFL properties did have catalogs and I have seen a sale for a 1982 catalog, but can't find one to look through.

I know that Kyle already posted about the player pennants from later in 90s. Those are common. These are something different.

The Ronnie Lott font screams “1980’s!” I’m thinking REO Speedwagon or Journey. :p

Coincidentally, I had the 1982 catalog Mark referenced but they aren't included anywhere within the 159 page book.

I'm probably the only other person here interested enough to notice but there are subtle design differences in these pennants that make me wonder if these were maybe prototypes or samples. They are so rare they couldn't have been widely marketed.

Joe Ferguson and Harvey Martin seem like odd choices for a pennant series when there's no evidence of a Tony Dorsett, Walter Payton, Earl Campbell, Lawrence Taylor, Dan Fouts or any other bigger star of the early 80s.

The Too Tall and Harvey Martin each sold for over $130 in 2010, so somebody recognized their rarity.

Lastly, how bleak has eBay become that I'm this intrigued by 1980s pennants? I guess the vintage needle is moving for me.

I’ve had three people contact me about the 1954 NY Giants pennant on ebay. It’s a fantasy and not a repro of anything that actually exists. The seller dropped the opening bid from $525 to $200, so I think he knows but isn’t disclaiming.

Yeah it’s a Mitchell and Ness circa 1998. I owned this when I first started collecting and bought a pile of these from their Philly store when they had one of their 50% off Super Bowl weekend sales. It actually looks like minor damage was intentionally inflicted on it to look old. The graphics on these don’t chip or crack but it kinda looks like it.

I don’t know of a vintage pennant with any text or date on the spine (besides the grommet pennants which have a fake spine).

And yeah, he knows. I told him and linked to a Huggins auction that said so.

Yeah, mine is pristine. There are honest ebay sellers who just don’t know what they have and then there are scammers…

Here’s a harder to detect repro.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/36412409806...ZS-YQ&LH_BIN=1

Repro or fantasy? :confused:

Repro. The white and blue versions were made of cloth, orange was softer felt. This is stiffer paper-felt and the MLB trademark looks odd.

Speaking of repros I grabbed these the other day because they were very cheap (even by repro standards). These are cool designs IMO

BF3 premiums
 

Those are all repros of 1936-7 BF3 felt premiums

Cool collection! I don’t have as many but I like them a lot including this KC Blues pennant. It may be a different series but the feel and construction is identical.

Unsolicited Pennant Life Hack:

If you display in rigid holders, trim them to fit the pennant.

As you know, many from the 40s and 50s are only 26” or 27” long. Notable the “sliding runner” company pennants. They always look weird in the bigger holder and they are also hard to keep centered. So get them in as deep as possible, then cut off the empty 3” or so off the side end. You need a file to cut through the edges but the plastic part cuts like butter with a guillotine paper cutter. They fit perfectly as the dimensions are almost a perfect proportional match to the holder.

I do the same with the 3/4 sizes which are roughly 8” by 26”, although you need to cut off an edge and close with invisible tape (best to use is gift wrapping tape).

Interesting eBay experience
 

Couple months ago: eBay seller had a cool pennant for auction with a “make offer” option. I saw it early, made offer, he accepted, paid immediately. Sale confirmed.

A half hour later, sale cancelled.

Exact same pennant now being auctioned. Starting bid of $0.99. Pictured on a round white table.

I just noticed the clown seller is calling it a “scroll pennant.” All it’s missing is a scroll.

His earlier response to me, after proving its origin to him:

“Read this listing it is 100% accurate. I have over $100,00 of t-206 to 1956 Topps PSA cards. And autograph of Baseball legends. I know the collection industry. Enough said.”

What a joke. Anyone with a brain can tell in a split second that the "1954 Giants Pennant" is a fake. And there's a bid on it, no less. :confused:

Shocker (about the round white table). If you want to disclose which one it is, I'll be sure not to bid on it. :rolleyes:

I’ll reach out, though it shouldn’t keep you from bidding. For the record, I think the obvious “modus operandi” of buying to flip is fine. But if a completed sale was meddled with … that’s not quite fine. There are worse selling tactics but still, this seems to cross a line of it is what it seems.

He’s a jerk. Enough said.

In the old days of ebay, we’d be able to reach out to the buyer who’s about to get duped.

Any chance you could get it cheaper than your original offer?

Or will you not deal with the new seller?

Nah my guess is he offered more than I did after the fact knowing he will still turn a profit from the flip. I’m not gonna bother bidding. eBay should have firm policies regarding third parties meddling with completed sales, if in fact that’s what happened (as it appears).

If you look closely at the pennant, there are minor flaws that don’t seem natural. Those pennants don’t crack or chip.

Somebody posted this as a 1915 Red Sox pennant. I'm a card guy, not a pennant guy. Can anybody help with this one?

If it is 10” by 30” then it *might* be a Detroit Free Press Red Sox pennant from the time, as they made city-only pennants for the A.L. teams. I think these pennants have two-colored tassels, also this pennant doesn’t seem to size up. Otherwise it’s pure speculation as far as year and team/sport.

Absent the 3D lettering and 2-color tassels, I seriously doubt it's a Detroit Free Press pennant. Not positive it's even a Red Sox Pennant, although I would lean towards "yes". The colors are right and the style is consistent with known exemplars.

Still (IMHO) there's a 10 - 20% chance it's just a period city/souvenir pennant. As far as it being specifically from 1915, I see no evidence of that. There's really no way to pinpoint the year without a vintage photo, advertisement, catalog listing, etc. The year 1915 seems very plausible (given the style), but the owner would need to share specific provenance/information to that effect.

Pennant
 

I am not much of a pennant guy but thought I would share my most recent acquisition

Wow! That's really cool.

a great, great item for a Reds and a pennant collector.

Beautiful piece of Reds history!

That’s fantastic! Great piece!

I have a chance to buy this Cubs pennant. I'd appreciate anyone who could give me a value on it. I could only find one like it but that one was autographed by all three players for $300.00. Thanks in advance!!

The others will weigh in on value….but ai really like it! Three great players!

Thanks Rob! I found a similar one with the pictures of 12 players. That one sold for $200 which was on Esty so there wasn't any bidding.


https://www.etsy.com/listing/9812379...isting_details

I think the three player one is a little tougher to find than the 12 player one. I would say around $150 for the 3 player version.

Thank you for that information!!

I bough this 3 cubs cub power pennant in white last year. Pretty tough to find it, esp in red. I'd value it at between $150 - 225. I've seen people asking £300 but they don't seem to sell at that price.

I love this series of cubs photo pennants.

These were made by ASCO and are very nice. Interestingly the Cubs are one team of a few for whom Trench never made a team picture pennant. Giants, Red Sox, Milwaukee Braves, Colts/Astros being the others (I think). Senators had one. Mets had one in ‘63 but it doesn’t seem like Trench.

Greg is a veritable treasure trove of pennant knowledge :eek:

Thanks Greg. That's great info about the Trench teams pennants.

I checked my Cubs power pennant and it's actually in red. I posted it here when I got it. (I need to think better of posting to the forum at 2am).

https://net54baseball.com/showpost.p...postcount=6165

Yes that Cubs pennant was made in both red and white.

I actually thought the version with the entire team was harder to find, but I wouldn’t know that for certain. They are all pretty tough.

From the Sliding Runner Pennant Co., Inc

Been looking for this for a long long long time, Mark has one and I have never seen one since. I know of five similar pennants from this company, with League Champions written inside a banner graphic:

1948 Braves
1948 Indians
1950 Phillies
1950 Yankees
???? Dodgers

Are there any others? ‘51 Giants? Undated Yankees?

Never seen anything like that. :eek: Do you have pictures of the others?

I think these are the 1948 Indians, 1950 Phillies and the 1950 Yankees

If anyone has a photo of the Braves, I'd love to see it.

Yes top two are mine. Here’s all four plus a Phillies in white (don’t know if others have different colored versions).

Greg, with regards to the Sliding Runner Pennants....I understood that this Red Sox was by AdFlag. The Dodgers Sliding Runner looks to be the same. Are they all AdFlag.

Gary, that’s all the same company. They had a unique way of sewing together spines from two different … spools … or whatever you call it. Like if they come to the end of one they just start another mid pennant without breaking the stitch. Here’s a Phillies from the same company.

Now that you mentioned it … could these all be early Ad Flags? I strongly doubt it. They do share the same stitching style, sans tassels. But these are a tiny bit smaller (26-27”) and generally better quality than Ad Flag whose artists seemed plucked out of middle school art class and are often cut weird. The very old Ad Flags though were not as bad. I think the maroon Braves pictured below is an Ad Flag, in comparison to the blue one which seems to be from the Sliding Runner Co.

Kyle (Domer) might have a better feel for this.

It wasn't ADFLAG. Your "mystery maker" was, most probably, a company we've never once discussed (I think) on this thread. Which baffles my mind; because this maker made a lot of baseball and football pennants in the 1940s and 50s. So many, I was certain it was a maker we've studied extensively. Not so....

We were, however, correct about this mystery maker's location. We speculated that, based upon the volume of New York team pennants associated with their designs, they were based in New York City. This, it seems, we got right.

Your mystery maker behind such legendary pennant series as "the sliding runner" and "the Heisman" is, I believe, the Epstein Novelty Co., 130 Park Row, N.Y.C. :eek:

I'm gonna let that sink in for now ... then come back later with proof.

Stay tuned.

Get your popcorn ready! :p

Every time one of those football runner pennants shows up on ebay, I click on the link to see if there is a label or stamp. As many of you know, that design was used for high school, college, and pro teams. There are so many, but never (from my experience) a label. After Kyle posted about Epstein, a quick Worthpoint search yielded one with a clear label. Really cool. They also have a pennant with a kicker design (although not the super common kicker design, which I think Kyle has attributed to Trench). This Fordham pennant has an Epstein label too.

YES!!! Mystery Solved!

“Dear Mr. Kotter, Please excuse Juan from school today. He’s busy making pennants. Signed, Epstein’s Mom.”

I was thinking along the lines of former Senators' slugger, Mike Epstein. Perhaps he got into baseball because Dad already had the pennants covered. :D

Good one! Unfortunately he didn’t get the same love that Johnny Groth got from WGN.

Here’s one of my favorite Epsteins … (just wanted to see how that sounds)

Now I can update the chapters of the book I imagine writing but never will, where pennants are grouped by maker and ordered in terms of my favorites:

Chapter 1: Trench. The gold standard
Chapter 2: WGN
Chapter 3: ASCO
Chapter 4: Epstein
Chapter 5: Keezer
Chapter 6: BF3 chocolate nuts or whatever
Chapter 7: Grommet Pennant Company of Somewhere in the Midwest
Chapter 8: Handmade pennants scribbled by kids on notebook paper
Chapter 9: Ad Flag

Great stuff Kyle. Thanks. I'll be busy updating my pennant catalog this weekend.

Kyle and Marc too.... Thanks to you both for solving yet another gonfalon mystery. :)

Not gonna lie…had to google “gonfalon.” :cool:

Epstein Novelty Co.
 

Right. So, who saw it being Epstein Novelty Co.? Raise your hand!

I have seen their pennants/labels for years; but, always assumed they were a small novelty distributor serving the New York area that sold, among other products, felt pennants. But, they must've actually been a manufacturer of pennants.

Epstein Novelty Co. goes back to the 1910s, when they primarily made badges and buttons. You'll see WWI-themed buttons bearing their mark and address on the reverse. Did they make pennants back then, too? Unclear.

Seems to me they likely began making pennants in the 1930s. The earliest one I can date was from the 1941 Rose Bowl. Their hey day seems to be the late 1940s, early 1950s. As Mark mentioned, they were absolutely huge in terms of market share: pro baseball and football pennants; but also collegiate and high school pennants, too. Most impressively, their pennants were not limited to NYC teams by any stretch; they served the entire nation.

They were a lot like Trench in that respect.

They're quality, however, was nothing like Trench's. By the late 1940s they ceased using labels, tassels; and, their designs were always monochrome. Their artwork, moreover, was super generic. Nothing team-specific. Just the same generic player used over and over again.

Case in point: our "sliding runner" and "the Heisman" series. I never realized these were made by the same maker until I saw these two Brooklyn Dodger pennants. Note the less than perfect lettering; especially the "O" in "DODGERS". It's a bit ... rough. :) Kind of explains why they occasionally fused scraps of felt together to make a spine....

To really solve the mystery, however, we needed one of these pennants from either series to also have a label or maker's mark on them. Last month I came across the Columbia pennant mark highlighted earlier--with an Epstein tag. That sealed the deal for me. I'm only aware of one other from "the Heisman" series with an Epstein label; and it's this Cornell pennant, complete with tassels, just like the Columbia one.

Anyway, mystery solved.

Epstein Novelty Co.
 

As Mark noted, Epstein Novelty Co. also produced a series featuring a punter kicking a football across the length of the pennant. I'm a little hesitant to call it a "series" because there are slight variations in these designs; but, overall, the concept is the same; and, many bear Epstein's label.

Let's name this the "the kicking punter" series :p

The only way that I attempt to help Kyle is by filling up his inbox with email listings every time I see a pennant with a label or some kind of pennant brochure. But I never saw the Columbia pennant. That's all Kyle. I do remember sending him a pic of an Epstein label from a Texas A&M pennant a few years ago, but never thought it would be the maker of these series. So Epstein did make more generic college pennants too.

Kyle- I always thought that the left footed kicker pennants (below) were made by the same company as the runner pennant (now identified as Epstein). But I think you have attributed this style to Trench. I have posted two examples below, with one clearly being older than the other. The older one seems very similar to the Epstein runner pennants with respect to materials and feel. Just wondering how/why you have associated the left footed kicker design with Trench. It's probably too weird for Epstein to have two different kicker versions (given how steadfastly they stuck to the runner and slider designs).

The newer version of the kicker pennant has additional details in the background. I know that these exist for some NFL teams. I think Fballguy has a pic of a Raiders pennant with this image on his website. Santa Clara stopped playing major football in 1952, so the pennant is likely 1952 or earlier. I suppose the two kicker pennants could have been made by different companies, with the newer being a copy.

Great stuff, keep it coming!

Will disagree about the allegedly generic nature of their pennants. At least as far as baseball is concerned. By my count 13 of the 16 teams have alternatives with a team-specific logo. Also many football. They also gave us the highly underrated full body roster pennant …

So, this is "an Epstein"? How you you/we know that?

I wonder if so few labels survived because they were sewn on so hap-hazardly, as on the Columbia pennant?

And, finally, this... My google skills are not up to par with some of you guys, but I found this from September 10, 1938. Check out "Football Novelties." Funny, too, that there's an ad for another maker - Amco.

Finding some info about Epstein Novelty

https://daytoninmanhattan.blogspot.c...65-bowery.html

It also looks like the owner of Epstein Novelty got into some trouble from tax evasion in the 1950s.

https://law.resource.org/pub/us/case...313.11100.html

See post 7172 above. Same exact blue jay. Pennant also same size, same stitching, same felt, and 7172 shows the unique split spine which Epsteins (LOL) are known for. Short of a pennant DNA test this is as conclusive as it gets.

Also Epstein:

I knew there was a reason! Now….please show me a close up of this “split spine” of which you speak. :p

What’s interesting is, the stitching is unbroken.

+1 :confused:

Can’t imagine what that’s about, as it sounds more like a condition flaw.

NM. Cell phone sucks

Greg posted as I was floundering and fat-fingering on my cell screen. So it IS a condition flaw. Epstein was apparently a cheapskate who underpaid his taxes and couldn’t even waste 2” of “spine material” to make it uninterrupted.

Shame on you, Epstein!

delete

So is this an “Epstein”?

https://www.worthpoint.com/worthoped...forty-22850599

This one has had a recurring case of split-spine syndrome throughout the years.

Nah you’re being too hard on my man Epstein … he gave the world the Brooklyn Dodgers hitchhiker pennant! This one, too

Hmmm … this looks like WGN to me … based on the spine and thin tassels.

Here’s an Epstein Niner pennant … just sold