Hey, pennant guys

[Fballguy]

Originally Posted by thetahat

I think it depends, only with respect to disclosure if you have to resell. Cleaning dirt of a pennant? That’s fine IMO. Carefully removing paint splatter? That, too. But trimming to make a pointy tip ... yeah that’s a no-no. Now I will say that the dreaded Ad Flags are notorious for wavy cuts, and while I generally avoid Ad Flags I do have a Colt 45s that looked like it was originally cut by an 8 year old with his art class scissors. And if anything the imperfections made it bigger. A straight edge and an exacto knife fixed it right up.

Loose tassels? No. Loose pictures? Yes. Elmers clear glue stick.

Blunt, torn or missing tip is my #1 pennant pet peeve. I just can't look past it unless we're talking about a pennant I may never see again. It's the first thing I look at when deciding to buy and I've bought plenty over the years that looked fine in the pics but once in hand, I could tell it had been sharpened. Never once was it disclosed and in fairness, many sellers wouldn't even know what to look for. It's also very hard to account for what every owner of a 70+ year old pennant did with it. There is no universally accepted pennant grading system. Most people judge a pennant on rarity and eye appeal. Though I will say, I've bought pennants from sellers who I know know better and yet it still wasn't disclosed.

Cleaning or removing stains is fine in my book. When you sell a car, do you disclose every scratch you buffed out?

As far as tassels and pictures...I don't see how you can differentiate one from the other. Why would it be ok to re-glue a loose picture, but not be ok to use a drop of fabric glue to secure a loose tassel?

[UKCardGuy]

Originally Posted by Fballguy

Cleaning or removing stains is fine in my book. When you sell a car, do you disclose every scratch you buffed out?

As an aside, what techniques do you guys use for cleaning pennants? I'm too scared to clean a felt pennant because I think I'd ruin it. I have a 60s Tigers pennant that doesn't look anything close to the white it's meant to be. I'd love to give it a bit of a clean.

[ooo-ribay]

Originally Posted by UKCardGuy

As an aside, what techniques do you guys use for cleaning pennants? I'm too scared to clean a felt pennant because I think I'd ruin it. I have a 60s Tigers pennant that doesn't look anything close to the white it's meant to be. I'd love to give it a bit of a clean.

Many of us use bleach. Yes, bleach.

If you post a picture of your Tigers pennant, some of us could probably give you pointers. Certain inks seem to be not affected by bleach, while others are a recipe for disaster.

[UKCardGuy]

Originally Posted by ooo-ribay

Many of us use bleach. Yes, bleach.

If you post a picture of your Tigers pennant, some of us could probably give you pointers. Certain inks seem to be not affected by bleach, while others are a recipe for disaster.

Thanks for the help. Here's a photo of the Tigers pennant. I'm also waiting on this Yankees Team Photo pennant to be delivered. I think it's a 1963 version. It's in even more need of a good clean.

[perezfan]

Not sure I would risk bleaching that Tigers Pennant. It's just not that bad, and the orange paint could conceivably bleed. Maybe Rob/Rob knows better, but I would err on the side of safety.

As for the Yankees... you'd need to carefully remove and re-apply the photo after bleaching. That one might be worth a try, as it's looking pretty rough, and is perhaps worth the risk. Perhaps Rob/Rob can chime in about the potential of red paint bleeding on that one.

I am not really a fan of the alterations being discussed. I have done it on rare occasion, and always disclose exactly what was done (if selling). But even then, who's to know what gets disclosed after the pennant changes hands a few more times? Therein lies the problem...

Trimming of the tip to form a point is probably the most prevalent alteration with vintage pennants, and is usually quite easy to detect if you know what to look for.

Cleaning a pennant is fine. Cannot even count how many times I've used scotch tape to lift off excess dust, debris, and especially pet hair. I think 75% of the pennants I've recently acquired have cat or dog hair inter-woven into the felt. If you have no propensity towards OCD, then nevermind and carry on.

[ooo-ribay]

Hey Gary - what follows are pictures of some bleach successes and one major disaster (the only one I've had). Two pennants had orange ink and were fine. The 1962 pennant has magic marker on it and a terrible tip but I don't think I've seen another in white. Two had blue and they were also fine. The red was a disaster. I drew the graphics back in with a sharpie and gave the damn thing away.

I always tape off the spine and hang them vertically on my shower wall. Spray with bleach and saturate with clean water very shortly after (a matter of seconds). Some other guys use 20%, 40% or 60% bleach to water for the initial spray. I have always used straight bleach but a watered down solution is probably a good idea.

If it were me, I'd try the Tigers pennant because I've done OK with orange. I think the red ink on the Yankees would rule it out. It's too bad because that pennant could really use a good cleaning!

[bocca001]

The only thing I'll add to the pennant alteration discussion is that one reason to collect pennants is for display. Cleaning them up can make them display better. I feel like it is ok to try to improve one that is in terrible shape anyway (unless is very rare, historically important, very valuable). If they are really dirty, they just don't look good on the wall.

But I've also learned that it can be very hard to make them look better. I think I've clearly improved (for display) maybe 2 of the 5 that I've tried to clean. I probably ruined one. And the other two ended up with improvement in one area, but some equal damage/color bleeding in another.

I would probably leave the Tigers pennant alone, but maybe try to clean the Yankees (It's pretty dirty). You just have to know that it might be a total loss (see Rob's red Giants batter).

As for Kyle's original question, tough call. I think I'm ok with a disclosed alteration that can be reversed (e.g., replace a missing tassel), but info about those alterations probably gets lost over time, which is a problem.