College Football Postcard Series
Reference checklists for early 1900s college football postcard series represented in this collection.
1905 Bergman College Football Girl Pennant Postcards
| Artist/Copyright: J. Bergman | Printer: Illustrated Post Card Co., New York | Year: 1905 | Cards in set: 6 |
Each card depicts a young woman in period dress holding a school pennant. The Harvard and Princeton cards also include footballs. Some copies feature glitter embellishment on the clothing and pennants — these are significantly rarer. All cards have undivided backs (address-only); the copyright line reads “Copyrighted by J. Bergman, 1905.” on every card except Yale, which omits the period after “1905”.
Columbia is the rarest card in the set; some published checklists omit it entirely. Brown and Dartmouth are not known to exist despite both schools fielding football teams by 1905.
Rarity ranking (easiest to hardest): Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Penn, Princeton, Columbia.
Sources: Pre-War Cards, “1905 Bergman College Football Girl Pennant Postcards Set and Checklist,” September 5, 2016; Pre-War Cards, “1905 Bergman Ivy League Football Postcards Have Variation & Intrigue,” May 25, 2017. Reference images courtesy Pre-War Cards.
1905 Ullman College Baseball and Football Postcards
| Publisher: Ullman Mfg. Co., New York | Year: 1905 | Cards in set: 8 (two sub-series) |
Each card shows a generic athlete (not a real player) in school colors with the university seal, school name, card number, and team cheer. The images were also repurposed on beer steins, mugs, and pitchers. The designs mirror elements found in Murad Tobacco silks (S21 and S22 sets). The large numbering gap between the two sub-series suggests other Ullman sets were issued between them.
Series 1 (Cards 1464–1467)
Series 2 (Cards 1518–1521)
Source: Pre-War Cards, “Ullman College Baseball and Football Postcards Set and Checklist,” October 1, 2016. Yale reference image courtesy Pre-War Cards.