For sale is a vintage pair of LEATHER MEN’S WINNER HOCKEY SKATES from the Planert Skate Company, Chicago, Illinois. The short light blade on hockey skates helps players with speed and quick stops. These skates probably date to the 1920s or 1930s. The leather tongue inside the boot is dried and somewhat brittle from age but otherwise the leather boot leather is in great condition. The size of the skates are not marked. The bottom of the boot measures about 12 inches from heel to toe. A great hockey or sports collectible.
In 1873, Ferdinand “Fred” Planert came to the States as a teenager from Germany. For a solid 20 years, he worked as a machinist, making a humble living to support his wife Anna and their five children. Around 1898, when Fred was already in his 40s, a request from his son for a pair of racing skates started Fred on a new life’s calling. In the early 20th century, F.W. Planert & Sons, also known as the Planert Skate Company, was one of the “The Big 3” in the Chicago-dominated ice skate industry. The other two notable companies were rivals Nestor Johnson and Alfred Johnson and the A.G. Spalding & Brothers. While Spalding made basically every type of sports gear under the sun, the Planerts and the Johnsons focused on ice rink culture. It was no accident that the ice skate industry had become unofficially headquartered in Chicago. The city boasted more than 600 outdoor ice rinks by 1923—most in the country according to the Encyclopedia of Chicago—and major skating competitions like the “Silver Skates” races in Humboldt Park regularly drew over 50,000 spectators. This was partly thanks to the city’s large population of Germans, Swedes, Ukrainians, and other immigrant communities with multi-generational ties to skating in all its various forms.
