1898 Cal Stanford Football Poster Found in Antique Store for $150.00

[CarltonHendricks]

This last Sunday was a heck of a start for 2011...I went to an antiques show at the San Mateo fairgrounds but found nothing...It was a rainy day and afterwards I headed off to some nearby antique stores in San Carlos....I hit pay dirt right as I waked in finding a cool Babe Ruth book...I paid for it then went thru the rest of the store....in the back sitting on an easel was a small 17" x 11" poster printed on cardstock advertising tickets to the 1898 Cal Stanford football game, priced at $275.00....I was shocked...I wasn't leaving without it but I did make an offer....$150.00 and they took it!!!!!!! My personal view is...tickets and programs are cute....but the poster is everything. You would probably be shocked how much I would turn down for this poster.

1892 - Stanford 14, Cal 10
1892 - Stanford 10, Cal 10
1893 - Stanford 6, Cal 6
1894 - Stanford 6, Cal 0
1895 - Cal 6, Stanford 6
1896 - Stanford 20, Cal 0
1897 - Stanford 28, Cal 0
1898 - Cal 22, Stanford 0
1899 - Cal 30, Stanford 0

I've never seen a poster advertising the tickets to a sports event...Usually they advertise the event and say where to buy the tickets...but not the tickets specifically. From a practical standpoint that seems to imply the game was so highly regarded, or known about, just where to get the tickets was all that was needed. It doesn't even say where the game would be held, just the date and time of the game and where to get the tickets! The game was held in San Francisco...a neutral city than Berkeley or Palo Alto so obviously the promoters were targeting San Franciscans...No doubt tickets were available at each campus but off campus the general public needed to know where to get them. They went on sale exactly seven days prior the game at 9:00AM.

The color and graphics are remarkably conservative and formal. Considering how brutal those early games were, I speculate if that was intentional to project a sanitized more palitable image to the general public as opposed to students. Someday I hope to read newspaper microfilm of the period. 98' was the first time Cal ever beat Stanford.

That antique store was only 15 minutes from Stanford...

HELLO 2011!!!