Pennant - from 1918?

[Shoeless Moe]

Seller guarantees it....

http://cgi.ebay.com/Great-Original-1...item45f83fc983

[perezfan]

Wishful thinking at its best

[rhettyeakley]

It's a rare 1918 New York Mets pennant!

[steve B]

Not old. The felt is too thin. The stitching viewed from the back is pretty sloppy too.

It's still a nice bit of moder folk art, and/or a neat homemade pennant. $10 sounds ok to me. It will be interesting to see what it goes for.

Steve B

[mjkm90]

It's simple number order error:

1918 vs 1981...see...fixed it.

[Duluth Eskimo]

I am suprised that most think this pennant is newer. Without holding it in my hand, I think the dating is correct. It's New York all right, but far from the ball park. I have had and seen many pennants like this ovr the years and have many college football pennants that show the same stitching and font style. Maybe I am the rube, but I think this is just a city pennant from 1918. Jason

[slidekellyslide]

Originally Posted by Duluth Eskimo

I am suprised that most think this pennant is newer. Without holding it in my hand, I think the dating is correct. It's New York all right, but far from the ball park. I have had and seen many pennants like this ovr the years and have many college football pennants that show the same stitching and font style. Maybe I am the rube, but I think this is just a city pennant from 1918. Jason

Me too...I've had plenty of pennants (Granted not from the teens), but from the 1930s to 50s that have that same exact style and I don't doubt their age at all. None of them were baseball related..and I don't think this one is either.

[mjkm90]

IMO the felt looks supple and new. The pennants I've handled from that era have less refined felt that has rippling and fading. It just looks too new to me. I've seen pennants like these at the National and I just get a bad feeling about them. They didn't smell old either. Is it possible it was made later to commemorate a class from 1918? We will never be able to answer these questions, but I stay away from these.

[steve B]

To me it was the thickness of the felt. I have a bunch of non-sports pennants from that era, and they all are made from a much thicker felt. They also have a manufacturers label on the back.

I'll try to do a couple pictures tomorrow to show what I mean.

Steve B

[Duluth Eskimo]

So this one is new too?

http://cgi.ebay.com/Great-Original-1...item43a4ad0f4c

[mjkm90]

Ya know what may be the problem here. I'm going to speak for others a bit. The pennants, Mark S, Mike E, and I collect are from pro teams primarily. Is it possible that the colleges and other groups used a higher grade more expensive felt than was used to make the mass produced pennants sold at the ballparks to kids?

I don't spend a lot of time looking over non-baseball pennants and almost never examine college and other types. Maybe these special pennants (like the one listed with the handstitched flag) were one of just a few made for a special occassion. Maybe they were made to be special where as those I collect were meant to simply turn a profit. That being said...the NY pennant is absolutely not a baseball pennant.

We have come accross a few made up "frankenpennants" for pro baseball teams over the years, and those experiences may have placed a bias on my judgement.

What do you all think?

[perezfan]

I believe that the New York Pennant and the Coney Island Pennant are both vintage to their respective time periods. In fact, I have little doubt that both are vintage and original.

When I said "Wishful thinking at its best" (in the 2nd post above) I meant that the seller was "wanting" it to be a Yankees Pennant. This is obviously just a generic New York Pennant, and is not baseball-related.

Whether the seller knows that or not is pure speculation. Sometimes these people knowingly misrepresent items, and sometimes it's unintentional. That's the "ebay gamble"... so it is incumbent upon the bidder to know his/her stuff. No different for autographs, ad signs, broadsides and anything else that can easily be misrepresented.

[steve B]

Ok, I think the Coney Island one has convinced me. That one does look old.
I haven't seen one that old with the dated arch.

Yesterday I had a look at the batch of pennants I have from the same era. Most of them are on very heavy felt, not at all like what's commonly available today. I had a whole thing written up explaining what I saw as the differences, and as I did it, I began to feel that maybe I was being too harsh, or perhaps wrong. I hadn't checked the sellers other auctions to see what stuff the pennant was with, a pretty basic error, as context while not any guarantee does have some meaning.

Looking at the batch of pennants, especially the Coney Island makes me glad I didn't post it.

I think what threw me was the overall slopiness of the construction of the NY pennant. The large ammount of overstitching, the spot where they ran outide the lines of the NY, and the other corner where there's a gap all made me think new and homemade. All the ones I have are more like the Coney Island, more precise, and with some details that just wouldn't be done these days except by a very good seamstress.

Steve B