A very wide variety of businesses have sponsored the creation of CFL ephemera over the decades, including Radio & TV, Newspaper, Automotive & Petroleum, Food & Restaurant, Printers and all manner of local small businesses. Two of the primary industries using sports to sell their products (Alcohol & Tobacco) generally shortened their client's lifespans, the more successful they were. No matter, you could even your odds by taking out a life insurance policy with the businesses that are the subject of this months post.
Insurance corporations have a long history of involvement supporting the CFL to help market their services. Here is a quick rundown of some of the publications they underwrote the expenses of producing, that now make interesting items for the modern day collector to pursue.
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Late 1940's / Early 1950's ? London Life Radio Listener Booklets |
London Life issued a series of booklets to help fans who listened to the games on the Radio follow the action. There is at least one older version of this publication as well that could have been issued as early as the late 1930's but I am actually unsure of the dates of these items. There may have been more than 3 issued, and certainly they would have been discontinued once television became the primary medium to deliver games to Canadian homes.
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Crown Life 1955 Roster Booklet |
Crown Life began sponsoring a roster publication for Canadian Football teams (from the three senior unions at the time) at least as early as 1955 which was something of a precursor to team specific media guides. The insides were pretty bare bones mimeographed type written pages but the information presented was the key deliverable. Some statistical analysis of the players demographic information was included as this was what Life Insurance companies specialized in.
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Crown Life 1959 and 1962 Roster Booklets |
The outsides were pretty plain as well for the first 3 years and then gradually incorporated different graphics each season. These references were most likely produced in small quantities just sufficient for team and media personnel because they are quite rare today and had they been meant for fans there would have been a lot more survived. The O.R.F.U. was dropped from the rosters after 1958. The 1962 cover is particularly inventive with the football helmets numerical motif.
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Crown Life 1964 and 1967 Roster Booklets |
These guides were continued up until at least 1967, by which time each CFL team had been producing media guides for at least 10 years, so exactly who the distinct audience was for these during the sixties is unclear. Replica summarizations of the contents of these booklets were produced by Joe Cronin at some point in the eighties, but naturally getting your hands on the originals is by far the preferred outcome. Wouldn't be cheap, I would expect that each of these guides would bring between $75 and $100 at auction today.
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Crown Life 1958 Schedules Pamphlet |
During the same time period Crown Life did produce mini fold out pamphlet types of combination schedules (Canadian Pro and College & U.S. Pro football) that also contained some historical statistical summaries and various other bits and pieces. These were targeted at individual fans and were a way to generate publicity for individual Life Insurance agents across the country.
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Crown Life 1970 Schedules Pamphlet |
With 16 panels of information (8 per side) these were pretty neat little collectibles. The earliest one I am aware of was issued in 1958 and the latest is 1970. From at least 1962 the cover featured a cartoon boy football player. These are not the easiest items to come across either, but much more plentiful than the roster booklets and are more in the range of 10-20 bucks.
The panel to the left of the cover was generally printed with a local Crown Life representative's name in a particular city (not necessarily a CFL franchise city either). Sometimes there was a different sponsor such as a radio station and sometimes the panel was blank. In any case it means that there were likely dozens of different versions of the schedules issued every year.
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1971 Standard Life Schedule with classic team logos
Jump to the Seventies and Standard Life sponsored a fabulous looking series of schedules starting in 1971 with a vibrant multi panel colour game action scene one one side. The schedules were issued for each team with their specific schedule on one of the reverse panels and the league schedule on the other two panels. Unfortunately they did not think (or it was too expensive) to have different colour action scenes for each team.
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1973 Standard Life Schedule with classic team helmet logos |
For all of these years there are at 10, maybe 11 schedules per year to collect for completists (one per 9 teams, French version for Montreal and potentially for Ottawa as well).
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1976, 1979 & 1986 Standard Life Schedule designs |
By 1976 the action photos were replaced by the league and team helmet logos and then from 1977 through 1984 they won the least ambitious graphic design award with the same large two digit year theme. The final three years of the schedules from 1985 through 1987 returned to a player graphic with a team helmet on the front indicating which franchise that schedule was for.
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1975 Pioneer Life Saskatchewan Schedule |
In some cases smaller regional life insurance firms got into the promotional schedule game for certain teams. On the prairies Pioneer Life put out items for Saskatchewan and Winnipeg over several seasons including a couple with historic teams from the late 19th or early 20th centuries. Nice.
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1977 Pioneer Life Winnipeg Schedule |
No matter where you currently sit on the actuarial tables, adding some of these interesting items to your collection is bound to be generate feelings of contentment, that should have a beneficial delaying effect on your eventual cashing in of your policy.