Unusual Piece on Ebay

What do you guys think of this piece?. Pretty Neat if you ask me. The pennants don't look like your normal BF2's but I was told by a knowledgeable collector that they are BF2's made special for this piece. He said he knows of two other ones like this one but one was cut up. He also said there is an ad for this piece. Must be a pretty rare premium and somebody got a steal.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&item=130297614098

that is a Ferguson Bakery premium that is hardly ever seen. When you stop and think that it has Cobb, Matty, Speaker, Big Train, Honus, Ol Pete, Maranville and Evers, that price was a steal. There is an excellent article on BF2 pennants in Old Cardboard #8, Summer 2006, that shows a picture of one of these and the ink blotter that had advertised how one could obtain this felt pillow top. The one pictured has a few different players than the one here. Interestingly, the author does not conclude that these are BF2s, or that Ferguson is responsible for BF2s. The photos used are from the D381 set and the blotter advertises pennants that also depict highly similar but somewhat different pennants, again that use the D381 photos. I too am not convinced that Ferguson Bakery issued the BF2s.

You got that right, that is a special piece! Granted, pennants aren't my niche, but I wasn't even aware that Ferguson Bakery premiums existed. This one is so clean and the player selection is unbelievable. I'm gonna post a few of the scans so we have them on the forum for future reference. Thanks for posting the link Jerry, and Todd for the great info!

Equally surprising is the selection of the lesser players including Stallings, Carrigan and Gardner. Also I am curious about the colors of the different "pennants". Why is Speaker's the only lightly colored? Is it chance, or is there more here than apparent?
Interesting, but too uncommon to draw comparisons.
Additionally, the cards may not be related to Fergusons at all. They could have been acquired from a pool of photos available from an independent photographer (unless the Ferguson premium is the entire pennant and not just the photo)..

Here is a pic from the Old Cardboard article--full credit to Jim and Chris Sexton (and Lyman) for a wonderful presentation. As you can see from the blotter, the pillow top supposedly could be obtained for 50 photo pennant tickets. I don't know if the Evers pennant is depicted so as to enlarge what the pennants on the pillow would look like or to suggest that individual pennants were available, but as I have never seen an individual pennant, I would assume the former. Curiously, the Evers photo does not match up with its Fleischman D381 card (I have not seen the Ferguson), and Fleischmans are supposedly identical to Fergusons except in the nameplate. Also, per my 2007 SCD Big book, there is no D381 Walter Johnson.

Like BF2 pennants, each player can be found in different colors--note the Cobb in the photo is orange and Evers on the blotter is blue. The size and format are remarkably similar to BF2s, but the photos used in these Ferguson pennants match up with D381 Ferguson Bakery cards (with a couple of exceptions), whereas the BF2s use photos from m101-4. If you already had 100 photos for your cards and were cropping them into these pennants, why bother switching to another group of photos and switching the pennant style/format (albeit only slightly)?


Edited to add: Gil, the "lesser known" subjects might be explained by the fact that they all managed or played for the Boston teams and Ferguson's was a Massachusetts business.

Incredible piece and I agree, a steal at that price!