B16 College Seals Flannels Set

Posted on October 12, 2016 by Pre-War Cards

‘It’s In The Details’

Title	B16 College Seals Flannels
Year	1900s
Size	Various
Images	Color
Type	Blanket/Felt
Number in Set	Varies by Type

B16 College Seals Flannels Overview

This issue included several types of felt/flannel items with the seals of colleges and universities as the focal point. They were produced by an unknown tobacco manufacturer in the 1900s or 1910s.

These were a little different than many tobacco products that featured school flags or pennants. While they did not feature actual players or athletes, the series did include pictures of various types of sports equipment with a few including generic athletes.

In all, three types (one with two sub-types) are known:

Type 1 (B16-1)

None of the B16s are terribly plentiful but Type 1 from the series might be the most common. There are actually two sub-types of Type 1, leading collectors to classify them as B16-1A and B16-1B. These are approximately 6 1/2″ x 9″.

B16-1A includes flannels with college and university seals for particular schools in the center. In addition to the seals, this group also has pennants. B16-1B has a similar layout but is slightly different, featuring different schools and also does not feature the pennants.

The sports component for this series comes in the form of various pieces of equipment around the border for a particular sport. All four major sports are featured as are other sports, including boxing, golf, tennis, hockey, rowing, fencing, polo, and others.

Type 2 (B16-2)

Type 2 B16s are mentioned here only for the sake of providing information on the full B16 series.

B16-2s are rare but of little consequence to sports collectors, save for possibly wanting one to complete a type collection B16. That is because they are non-sports issues. These have the appearance of a fancy Persian rug and include school seals and all sorts of decorations. None, however, feature the sports equipment as featured in Type 1.

Even though many are seen without tassles, the original unaltered rugs do have them on the ends, similar to the B33 issue.

Type 3 (B16-3)

Type 3 of the B16s are arguably the most desirable to card collectors.

These are very similar to B33s in that they feature pictures of generic athletes competing in all sorts of sports for different schools. The same theme exists with each school having multiple flannels – one for each sport.

Each picture used for the various sports remains the same across the colleges. In other words, the baseball pose is the same for all colleges, etc.

I have yet to see a full checklist of the sports and schools involved. But given that the poses and layout is similar to those in B33, a checklist similar to that could have been used. In B33, there are a total of ten different sports for a total of 30 different schools (giving a total of 300 felts in the set).