Any info on a vintage pennant from Disneyworld?

April 26, 2018 5:43 AM

At Casey's in Disneyworld there's a pennant that reads "Grand Haven," likely referring to Grand Haven, Michigan. Is this real vintage or faux-vintage? Does anyone have any information on this pennant at all, such as when it was made or where knockoffs can be found?
posted by GamblingBlues to Grab Bag (6 answers total)

There’s no Grand Haven college or university, and the high school athletics’ colors are not red and white. Since this is Disneyland I think it’s safe to assume it’s fake.

For comparison, here’s a vintage tourist shop pennant from Grand Haven.
posted by ardgedee at 5:58 AM on April 26, 2018

Response by poster: It's a poor pic but the pennant is yellow with blue, which are the local HS's colors.
posted by GamblingBlues at 6:15 AM on April 26, 2018

The colors may not mean anything anyway. I have several old Wilmington, Delaware pennants I bought on ebay and the colors really vary.

It may be real, pennants were popular souvenirs and aren't that hard to find. You could try asking Disney if the decor is real. There are companies that sell old stuff in bulk for restaurant decor.
posted by interplanetjanet at 8:48 AM on April 26, 2018

Pennants were incredibly common tourist shop souvenirs in the pre-plastic and Chinese sweatshirt era. There's no real reason to suspect it's fake. I'd put an alert on eBay for one.

Another thought is to contact the local or nearest historical society, or the state historical society, with your question.
posted by Miko at 9:06 AM on April 26, 2018 [2 favorites]

It's also entirely possible that one of the people making the fake pennants for decor purposes happened to be from Grand Haven and that's why the colors are correct.
posted by potrzebie at 7:26 PM on April 26, 2018

Did you search for images? This popped up via Etsy - no longer for sale though.
posted by Miko at 8:30 PM on April 26, 2018