Pennant wall hanging hits one out of the park

Baseball's blue-ribbon event -- the World Series -- opens with game on Tuesday night. Millions will tune in, watch and listen.

In today's What's It Worth? we answer a reader's question about their baseball collectible, certainly one of the top items we've ever been asked to review. It is old, unique, highly collectible and quite valuable.

Q. This felt wall hanging was made by my grandmother in 1917 or 1918.

Displaying more than 200 small photo pennants of Major League Baseball players of that era, the center is a larger pennant of Grover Alexander.

It has been cherished as a family heirloom through the generations.

The story is that the pennants were giveaway items from a bread company. How Grandmother came to have them is unknown; the bread company was in the Northeast, the family lived in Arkansas. It measures about three feet by five feet. What can you tell us? -- Dave in Pasco

A. Wow! That was how baseball experts responded when we showed them photos of this spectacular item.

It is skillfully crafted of miniature felt pennants beautifully hand stitched to the felt background. These pennants -- called the BF2 Series by collectors -- were premiums received for purchases of Ferguson brand bread in 1916. Ferguson was headquartered in the Boston area.

The little felt photo pennants are scarce. The promotion only ran one year. Collectors seek them out. Depending on condition and the player pictured, they range in value from $25 to several hundred dollars each. There were 97 individual players represented in the original complete set.

The large pennant -- Grover Alexander, the central figure in this hanging -- measures 9 by 25 inches. These were a very special item from Ferguson and you had to buy a lot of bread to get one.

Each small pennant -- they are 3 by 6 inches -- had a coupon on the back. Turn in 50 coupons and you received a larger pennant. The big formats -- the company called them Premium Pennants -- are rare.

About a dozen top players of the day were featured on the premium pennants.

Alexander, for example, pitched 90 shutout games during his career and recorded 373 wins. Both were National League records at the time. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1938. He was so good that -- after he won game seven of the World Series in 1926 -- sports writers called him "Alexander the Great."

Only seven or eight premium size Alexander pennants, in any condition, are known to exist.

There are many multiples on this hanging; just 19 individual players are represented. And the pennants' overall condition is not great. Folding over the years has caused deterioration on many of the photographs.

To get an idea of how collectors would judge condition and potential value, we talked with Seattle's Dave Eskenazi. He is a sports historian, collector and one of the leading authorities on baseball collectibles in the western United States.

He told us many collectors would place a technical grade on the pennants from "poor" to "fair," not only because of the folding damage but because each has all those precise little stitch holes along the edge. However, condition might not matter that much in this case.

"This is a kind of tough one," Eskenazi remarked as he evaluated photos of the hanging. "You can't value it based on price guides and records from previous individual or group sales.

"There is also a folk art aspect here that adds tremendously to value and, more than likely, makes up for the technical condition grades of the individual pennants," he said.

Eskenazi's opinion is that the minimum price the hanging would bring in a specialist auction is $10,000.

"If I were a high-end baseball pennant or baseball folk art collector -- and I know some -- they'd want this in a big way." he said. "I'd estimate the value here between $10,000 and $20,000. And it would not surprise me if it sold for more," he said.

Wow!

-- Terry K. Maurer, Tri-Cities personal property appraiser, is a member of the Certified Appraisers Guild of America. For possible use in a future column, direct questions on your antiques and collectibles to What's It Worth? by email to tchwhatsitworth@gmail.com.

This story was originally published October 18, 2014 at 11:33 PM with the headline "Pennant wall hanging hits one out of the park ."