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Reference Desk
What is the tan school folder with the sports drawings?
The golden-tan folder with the pen-and-ink sports drawings is a Pee-Chee All Season Portfolio, first manufactured in 1943 by the Western Tablet and Stationery Company of Kalamazoo, Michigan and later made by Mead. Its name comes from the peach-yellow stock it was originally printed on.
The drawings that make it recognisable are not original to it. They were added in 1964 by Francis Golden, a watercolourist better known for fishing and hunting subjects, and they show high-school athletes: a cheerleader, a footballer, a basketball player and a row of runners.
Five things that make it a Pee-Chee and not a lookalike
- The pockets are on the SIDES, not the bottom. This is the design's one functional idea: contents do not fall out if the folder is stored upside down.
- The oval logo reads Pee-Chee above ALL SEASON PORTFOLIO in small caps.
- A diagonal line crosses the cover corner to corner, part of the printed design rather than a fold.
- The illustrations are line drawings in a single ink colour, not photographs and not full-colour printing.
- The artist's signature sits at the lower right of the illustration block.
What is printed on the inside
Open it. The inside flaps carry reference tables — measurement conversions, multiplication tables and similar — which is the detail most people forget and the one that settles an identification when the cover is too worn to read.
Two things people mistake for a Pee-Chee
| What it is | Listings in this pull | Median ask |
|---|---|---|
| O-Pee-Chee trading cards — a different company entirely, a Canadian card printer | 948 | $17.79 |
| T-shirts, hoodies and sweatshirts printed with the Pee-Chee cover art | 14 | $20 |
| Actual Pee-Chee All Season Portfolios | 2 | $72.50 |
That table is the honest state of the market. Search any US affiliate feed for Pee-Chee and 269 of the 282 results are hockey cards from an unrelated company; 11 more are clothing printed with the artwork. The folder itself is the rarest thing the search returns.
Colours other than the famous one
The peach-yellow is the original and the one people picture, but Mead also sold Color Talk Pee-Chee folders in five colours with an updated design. A blue or green folder with the oval logo is a genuine Pee-Chee; it is simply the later, less-collected version.
Last verified 6 September 2026 against 967 listings matching Pee-Chee from US advertisers in the CJ product feed, of which 2 are the folder itself, asking $70 and $75 as they did on 31 August 2026. Peer-to-peer marketplace asks of $500 or more are excluded as seller placeholders, as are repdigit asks such as $999 and $9,999 wherever they appear; retailer prices are used as published.
Frequently asked
What is a Pee-Chee folder called?
Its full product name is the Pee-Chee All Season Portfolio.
Who drew the Pee-Chee artwork?
Francis Golden, from 1964. He was better known for watercolours of fishing and hunting subjects.
Why is it called Pee-Chee?
After the peach-coloured stock the folder was originally printed on.
Is O-Pee-Chee the same company?
No. O-Pee-Chee is a trading-card printer and has nothing to do with the Pee-Chee folder, despite dominating every search for the name.
Sources
- Wikipedia, Pee-Chee folder — first manufactured 1943 by the Western Tablet and Stationery Company of Kalamazoo, Michigan, later MeadWestvaco; the All Season Portfolio product name; the peach-colour origin of the name; Francis Golden's illustrations from 1964; the side-pocket design; the Color Talk five-colour range; and the fall from general use by the 2000s
- CJ Affiliate product feeds, US advertisers, queried 6 September 2026 — every price statistic on this page is computed from that pull
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How this page was made. Drafted with AI (Claude); not yet independently re-checked. How we work