January 2012 Pick-Up Thread...

[CarltonHendricks]

18 1/4" x 12"


24" x 18.75


Read more about this broadside on my home page www.SportsAntiques.com

It's been a good January for broadsides..one of my favorite collecting areas. I picked up the three above over the last month. One of the best aspects a broadside can have is the year plainly announced...and the FB and the balloning both have the year...the Yale one is a little tougher...no sport indicated. I'm pretty positive the Yale vs. Riverview was for Riverview Military Academy, in Poughkeepsie New York...opened in 1866, closed in the 20's ...The two schools are about 80 miles apart. And I think it would have been for baseball being that it was in May....and the word "game" called at 3:30, is used as opposed to a "meet" or "regatta" or "race" or something...

The football one is for Harvard freshmen vs Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire NH...Harvard and Exeter were very tight at the turn of the century...Exeter had the first cinder track and Harvard would travel there to use it...The broadside is a pink color.


All three are so fragile I hesitate to even touch them any more than necessary until I get them framed. The French ballooning one is so big 33 1/2" x 16 1/2" and it's so fragile I'm amazed it's in such good shape. I asked the seller where he got it and he couldn't remember and said he'd had it a long time and stored it carefully.









You find antique broadsides printed on various weight paper...from heavy cardstock to very light paper. All the ones above are on very lightweight paper. The lightweight ones are interesting...Broadsides printed on cardstock would have had to have been pinned or nailed to display...But I think these lightweight paper ones were dipped in a wheat paste solution and pasted to a wall. As I recall from reading up on it years ago...the persons who went around pasting posters to walls and fences were called bill posters and I suppose it was a profession of sorts. I speculate during the 19th - early 20th century a school or business or some entity would place an order for a broadside with a printing house and perhaps the printing house would hire a bill poster to go around with a stack of broadsides pasting them up. As I recall this was common in London and Paris...and no doubt here in America. Obviously the lightweight ones that have survived never got posted. The bigger a broadside the more rare.


Occasionally I'll buy a non sports broadside. Probably the greatest non sport broadside I ever saw was a could'a should'a....It was probably 5 years ago...I saw it on eBay and swung too low...It was a lecture broadside for Frederick Douglas the 19th century African American social reformer...It was about four feet tall and his name was in huge elongated font...a total classic...but it was in real bad shape....But if ever there was a broadside worth restoring!!! Phew!...I've never forgotten that one.