Great pickups guys. I have had a great couple of weeks at picking up some 19th century pieces, mostly football related.
First off, I picked up a Victor patent 1891 Batwing Noseguard. While Batwing noseguards are rare in their own right, I believe this one is even rarer than the standard batwing noseguards. The regular bat wing noseguard has the general shape of a regular noseguard with the cheek protector jutting out at each side. The one I picked up has the neckband at bottom, and has no forehead piece. I wasn't sure what to make of this, until I was perusing the Antique Sports Uniforms and Equipment book (which is an awesome book by the way and highly recommend it) --> In the football section, they show a page from a circa 1900 Victor sports catalog. In the page, they show a Victor Bat wing nosemask No. 535, which looks like the regular shaped batwing, then below it the list: Victor Face Mask No 535B, and list the following description:
"Similar to shape of the No 535, but has longer chin piece and no forehead rest. This mask is more intended for the end's use, having band around neck instead of head, it may be dropped away by simply relaxing pressure of the teeth, when it will hang until required for use again. Victor Quality Throughout"
This exactly matched the nosemask I just picked up, and I can't imagine this was a very popular item, given that the only thing that kept it on your face was by clenching it with your teeth! The noseguard came from an estate in Alliance Ohio area along with a photograph of a player shown with it around his neck.
Neck, I picked up a group of 11 1890's silk college flags. I have bid on a couple of these in the past, but have never seen a large group like this. Included in the group are: Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, Cornell, Columbia, Vassar, NYU, Minnesota, a red flag with yellow O which I believe is Oberlin, a yellow flag with white T which I haven't identified yet, and an odd flag with a unicorn on it. If anyone has any ideas on the T flag and uniform flag, I would love to hear them.
I also picked up this awesome victorian scrapbook, that is packed with ephemera from Yale from about 1893 to 1896. It includes ticketstubs, tintypes, clipped scorecards, and much more. The scrapbook is filled with envelopes that contain little notes, clippings about the Yale footbal team, etc, and I haven't went through it in detail yet. One of the scorecards is of an 1893 game between Yale and the Brooklyn Grooms which featured Dan Brouthers, Hardy Richardson, etc.
My favorite items in the scrapbook is three tintypes of 3 ladies, 2 holding tennis rackets, with the other wearing a Yale Football sweater and toting a large melon shaped football. These were very loosely attached in the book, and these were the only thing I have removed at this point. One was actually loose when I received it.
The last 19th century piece I picked up is a very large poster from Ogdensburg NY for an 1890 Horse Racing event. It is framed and measures 44 by 28 inches.
