Hey, pennant guys

[bocca001]

Greg- I see that now. Your red Astros and my red Astros have a different font.

Rob- I did end up getting some "Retro Clean" detergent from Amazon, and used it to try to clean up the Canteen Corp Oilers pennant below. It wasn't an expensive pennant and I figured that I was experimenting. I was most interested in getting off the brownish spots that looked like foxing to me. I used a small spoon to try to get the detergent/water mix on the felt, but not the paint. I ended up getting a drip on the helmet, which turned into a mess. The helmet and football are painted off-white. The detergent took the off-whie away and left just white. So, I tried to go down to the white level on the entire helmet, with mixed results. I'm ok with the results given that I knew I would probably mess it somehow. I was happy with the ability of the retro clean to significantly reduce the brown spots (on a color pennant) with just 5 or so minutes of soaking before a water rinse. I think the best solution is to try to wait for a clean pennant to become available. But some of these thin, lighter-color fabric pennants always seem yellowed, browned, and dirty.

[Fballguy]

Don't think I've ever seen a fabric Canteen Corp. pennant. I believe mine are all stiff. What did the cleaner do to the red paint? Anything?

[ooo-ribay]

Originally Posted by Fballguy

What did the cleaner do to the red paint? Anything?

Yeah, Marc, we need you to spray the whole thing with Retro-Clean and report back with results.

Seriously, the way it did not ruin the blue/gray felt makes me think it might be the perfect stuff for an old, red, heavily stained NY Giants pennant I own.

[bocca001]

Originally Posted by ooo-ribay

Yeah, Marc, we need you to spray the whole thing with Retro-Clean and report back with results.

Seriously, the way it did not ruin the blue/gray felt makes me think it might be the perfect stuff for an old, red, heavily stained NY Giants pennant I own.

If you use this stuff, you probably need to cover/avoid any paint (or at least test the paint for color fastness by rubbing a small area of the paint with a Q-tip soaked in the detergent). Like I said, it took off the offwhite paint coat from the Oilers helmet on contact (just one drip). I think that coat had mostly yellow in it. And, when I soaked the fabric close enough to get near the red, the red started to bleed.

This pennant seemed to be especially prone to bleeding paint. I dipped a Q-tip with water and rubbed it on the red and the red started to come off.

But, like I said, I was impressed with how well it got out the brown, foxing, rusty spots and how quickly it did it. I think I had the detergent mix on it for 5 minutes at most (I spooned it on to the felt areas to try to avoid paint). It also brightened up the blue fabric. The hard part is cleaning all of blue fabric that is between the graphics/letters.

[bocca001]

Once I set up an area to take pictures, I decided to take some pictures. So, here are:

SF Giants:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/3asA1U9ieVAa8fqYA

SF 49ers:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/EJMz8fH2goMc7afWA

Houston Oilers:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/ebrG4CcAG2xoCM54A

[ooo-ribay]

Great stuff, Marc! Interesting that the Niners basically used two colors, while the Giants are all over the color spectrum.

[thetahat]

Finished inventory of a few more teams, came across this ... didn’t we earlier discuss Cubs and Giants pennants with the same cookie-cutter ballpark graphic?

This has to be a knock-off company ... the graphics/style are similar to Trench of the time period ... and maybe copying the stadium graphic would be too close to copyright infringement. Who knows ...