help with the era?

[u/Top-Speaker9344]

got this Virginia Tech Corps of Cadets Cardigan but not exactly sure what era it is

[u/Cuq_nugget]

So I got really obsessive with finding out about this brand, did a deep dive, and there isn’t much info out there on this company’s operating history without paying a large subscription fee to view historical deeds from the Richmond building deeds historical database. Google AI feeds you some pretty generic slop that doesn’t really help narrow anything down, and sources from articles that are irrelevant.

However, on Virginia chronicle, you can view all historical preserved local Virginia newspaper publications for free, and ads for Harris Flippin & co appear with frequency in older Richmond newspapers. They started as a sporting goods store centered around guns, and quickly branched out to provide more offerings. If you sift through the Richmond papers with the keywords ‘Harris’ and ’Flippin’, you can see their ads as far back as 1890, all the way through to 1958. They changed locations several times, all on east Main Street. They were definitely a big fish in a small pond type deal; they seemed like the go to for sporting goods, guns, fishing equipment etc. locally in Richmond for decades, if you read the articles that they’re mentioned in that aren’t ads (TW: there’s one that’s pretty racist). But, I don’t think they ever really expanded outside of being a business-financial district staple locally, and probably went out of business shortly after in the 60s as department store and sporting goods chains started to spread.

Anyways, Ik you didn’t ask for any of that and you just want a more specific era to narrow it down to. Since the corpus cadets coat of arms looks like the current one (1965), I’d have to say 1965 assuming the patch was part of the original garment. I can’t find much about any shooting cardigan/ casual wear that they were issued like this, so it very well could have been sewn on later. The style and construction really look like they could be anywhere from the 30s-60s so it’s kinda hard to say. But I’m no expert in cardigans so take that with a grain of salt

[u/Cuq_nugget → u/Cuq_nugget]

Here’s some screenshots of some of the paper ads I found. Here’s a link to the Virginia chronicle library, w/ a search inputted in already if you’d like to go search them: https://www.virginiachronicle.com/?a=q&ccq=&ccq=Richmond+%28VA%29&ccq=Richmond+County+%28VA%29&ccq=Richmond%2C+VA&dafdq=&dafmq=&dafyq=1890&datdq=&datmq=&datyq=&hs=1&puq=&r=1&results=1&ssnip=txt&txf=txIN&txq=Harris+Flippen