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A Thread Dedicated to Rutgers Football Rarities and Memorabilia

I've been looking for the Rutgers / Larry Bird game (especially the very end)..... anyone see it on YouTube or elsewhere?
I looked too. Could never find it- I don't think there was any TV. I would even take a WRSU call of the game along with several others from that era.
 
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Although this isn't older vintage, I've always liked this Rutgers football nesting egg from the late 90s. I was surprised someone in Russia produced it due to the state of the program at the time. I had Mike McMahon autograph it.
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Very cool. How many dolls are contained within the biggest one?

The showcase display of Rutgers Football artifacts outside of the Special Collections area of Alexander Library contained Rutgers items including a nesting doll of Greg Schiano. The collection was suppose to end right about when Rutgers decided to close down. So I'm guessing the exhibit still sits there.

Never saw it - or yours - before. Do you know the company that manufactured it?
 
Tried to post a pic of a small crazy looking Rutgers guy I have, but apparently I don’t know how to post a picture. Anybody want to tell me how it’s done?
I used Imgur - it’s a website that hosts your pictures. Then you copy that url, go to your post, click on add image icon, paste it.
 
The Red Ball Gum Co. of Chicago offered sports pennants circa 1936-38 including these 4.5" x 2.5" Rutgers college pennants. Red Ball offered versions from various teams and sports. A larger 12" x 28" pennant was available with enough gum wrappers and a quarter.
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This collectible was available circa 1940s or early 1950s. You wind it up and it plays "Vive Les Rutgers' Sons" on a music box inside the football. It's 4.25" long and made of celluloid or bakelite material. Each school had its own fight song play. A small flat platform on the bottom allows it to stand without rolling away. It originally may have had a black ashtray to set the ball on top of.

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Looking for a pin from our game against ND in the last game at Notre Dame Stadium (in 1996) before they rehabbed it.

They sold them in the ND bookstore but were out of them by the time I got there.

Only significant pin for a game or an Rutgers related event I don’t have.

Tried on the ND Boards over the years but no luck.
 
Very cool. How many dolls are contained within the biggest one?

The showcase display of Rutgers Football artifacts outside of the Special Collections area of Alexander Library contained Rutgers items including a nesting doll of Greg Schiano. The collection was suppose to end right about when Rutgers decided to close down. So I'm guessing the exhibit still sits there.

Never saw it - or yours - before. Do you know the company that manufactured it?

I haven't opened it since I bought it back in the late 90s. It's kinda fragile and I don't want to risk cracking it while trying to open it. I can't remember if there a total of four of five dolls. I think it's five. I remember Jacki Crooks being one of dolls inside.

The bottom of the doll reads "Made in Russia" and "H.M." The H.M. may simply mean handmade. Unfortunately, I have no idea how many were made.
 
This collectible was available circa 1940s or early 1950s. You wind it up and it plays "Vive Les Rutgers' Sons" on a music box inside the football. It's 4.25" long and made of celluloid or bakelite material. Each school had its own fight song play. A small flat platform on the bottom allows it to stand without rolling away. It originally may have had a black ashtray to set the ball on top of.

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This is great! I've never seen one of these.
 
The American Nut & Chocolate Company of Boston (still in business) offered various baseball sports felts in the 1950s. Around 1937, they offered these 2" x 3" college football felt pennants including the leather helmeted Rutgers quarterback pictured in the upper right hand corner.

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Rutgers Football's First Cannon

The Little Brass Cannon was the trophy given out to the in-season round robin rivalry (1929-1975) of The Middle Three - Rutgers, Lafayette and Lehigh. A drawing of the cannon appears on the cover of the October 18, 1957 Rutgers-Lehigh program. It was donated by Rutgers for the 1941 Rutgers-Lafayette game but it was head coach J. Wilder Tasker who pushed the idea of getting the cannon in 1931. It was manufactured at the Winchester Repeating Arms Company of New Haven, CT between 1903 and 1958.

Here is the replica of the cannon on You Tube complete with its sound. It was reported in the 1930s that it made a helluva bang for such a little guy. When Rutgers won the trophy in 1958, it was discovered that Lehigh had lost the cannon while in its possession. A replacement arrived in 1961.



And it's decendent since 1971:
 
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Looking for a pin from our game against ND in the last game at Notre Dame Stadium (in 1996) before they rehabbed it. They sold them in the ND bookstore but were out of them by the time I got there. Only significant pin for a game or an Rutgers related event I don’t have. Tried on the ND Boards over the years but no luck.

If I ever see one, I'll try to alert you.
 
Well you are the @Source so if anyone can it’s you. :ThumbsUp

What's it actually look like? Does in have Notre Dame and Rutgers on something that looks like a campaign button? Does it have the ND coach or the date or other special insignia on it?
 
What's it actually look like? Does in have Notre Dame and Rutgers on something that looks like a campaign button? Does it have the ND coach or the date or other special insignia on it?
I can’t recall but I do know they used to make one for every home game.

I still have the commemorative “Final Battle” t-shirt they sold at Bookstore.
 
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Victory cargo ships replaced American boats sunk earlier in World War II. Ships were named for allied countries, American cities and then a line of 150 ships named after colleges and universities who contributed to the war effort. The first ship off this line was the S.S. Rutgers Victory. It was christened by Manuel Quezon, widow of the Phillipines president, on February 2, 1945 in Terminal Island, CA just two hours before the fall of Manila with three military Rutgers alumni looking on according to the March 9, 1945 “Rutgers Cannon - Wartime Successor to the Targum.” It was not until 1971 that the 445-foot long, 10,500 deadweight tons, single-screw 6,000 horsepowered S.S. Rutgers Victory was mothballed for good. She was sold for scrap metal in Spain in 1985.

The second photo of her is being offered on ebay at the link under the photo. The name is imprinted on the right side:
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https://www.ebay.com/itm/mc5125-Ame...565641?hash=item54855aaf09:g:H6AAAOSwmOJaM7eK
 
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I just acquired this little guy who was made in Japan, possibly as early as the late 1930s or into the 1950s. The cheap celluloid doll pinbacks were college specific and sold at stadiums. You see "Japan" stamped on the back of his head. Many items like this between 1946 and 1950 were stamped with "Manufactured In Occupied Japan." So this guy is a little before the War or from the 1950s.

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Like @S.W.A.I.N , I have some items from the Harvey Harman estate. I have a celluloid doll he owned. It's similar to yours @Source . This one has a red top and black pants.

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The best item I was able to obtain from Harman's estate was this pendant. It was given to Harman following the 1938 season. The front has the final score of the RU-Princeton game (RU's first win over Princeton since college football's inaugural game in 1869; RU had lost 33 straight vs. PU). Also, it reads Middle Three Champions on it. Rutgers won the title that year by beating Lafayette and Lehigh. More on the Middle Three Conference in the link below. It's tough to read on the photo, but the rear of the pendant is engraved "H. HARMAN" with "COACH" underneath it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Three_Conference

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That Harvey Harman engraved gold football fob is absolutely gorgeous. When you say you got it from the Harman Estate was that recent? Was it on ebay or some type of estate sale? Because Harman died back in 1969.

Regarding the Middle Three... it was never a "Conference" like the B1G is. Yet sources keep insisting it is. The relationship is more like the in-season round robin that goes on between the Army, Navy and Air Force for the Commander-In-Chief's Trophy.

However, the Cannon Trophy was among America's earliest traditional prizes in college football. The November 9, 1940 Targum reported, “Ordained into the ranks of the old oaken bucket of Purdue-Indiana fame and the little brown jug, prize of the Michigan-Minnesota rivalry, the University’s brass cannon was donated as a permanent victory award to the annual winner of the mythical Middle Three championship…”

Princeton, Yale and Harvard were considered the top powers over the first half century of college football and were unofficially dubbed “The Big Three.” Amherst, Williams and Wesleyan would informally become “The Little Three.” Rutgers, Lafayette and Lehigh considered themselves to be somewhere inbetween as football powers and dubbed themselves “The Middle Three” for football in 1929. They first played each other in 1884, 1888, 1894, 1895, 1899 and then resumed in 1921. Rutgers was the first school the Lafayette football program ever played. Rutgers was the second for Lehigh’s program.

Rutgers, Lafayette and Lehigh played an in-season round robin from 1929-75 (suspended in 1936, 1952-53.) Rutgers won the Middle Three championship 23 times in 44 tries (1932-35, 38-39, 45-49, 58-64, 67-68, 72-74).
 
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I looked too. Could never find it- I don't think there was any TV. I would even take a WRSU call of the game along with several others from that era.
from what I understand.. when NJN aired Rutgers games they recorded on videotape.. and later re-used those tapes... thus erasing those games.
 
That Harvey Harman engraved gold football fob is absolutely gorgeous. When you say you got it from the Harman Estate was that recent? Was it on ebay or some type of estate sale? Because Harman died back in 1969.
I bought the Harman items from a dealer at the National Sports Collectors Convention in Chicago in 2005. He provided paperwork to ensure provenance of the items.
 
I have one IZOD RED sock left from those that I wore to games during the Frank Burns ERA .They were indeed lucky socks most of the time.
 
Here's another favorite from my collection. It's a 1910 S23 college silk from Richmond Straight Cut Cigarettes. It measures 5 1/4 x 3 7/8 inches. This is one of a series of 50 silks featuring the college cheers, and sometimes mascots, for each of the colleges featured. This series of silks are difficult to find.

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Yeah, I saw that. A little too rich for my blood. I've paid about $50 each for the ones I have.

The funny thing is that Rutgers didn't have an ice hockey team around 1910 when that felt was issued. They did try to form one around 1920 by flooding a constructed "rink" on Neilson Field. But, like other efforts done periodically, you needed the weather to co-operate. But they eventually succeeded in the 1920s by simply meeting teams in ice arenas in the tri-state area.
 
This was presented to members of the 1937 Rutgers football team at their annual dinner. It was also Rutgers head coach J. Wilder Tasker's final season. The charms are known as football fobs or watch fobs because the tradition goes so far back you could link them to your pocket watch.

The earliest known awarding of football fobs was after Yale’s 1882 season when the February 24, 1883 Morning Journal and Courier of New Haven, CT reported, “It was voted that the members of the eleven be presented with gold charms in the shape of footballs.”

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