Packard Forum Index » Pre-War (1899-1942)

If you pay attention, some really rare tid-bits show up on eBay. This little piece just sold for more than $2,000 (two thousand)!!!

Of course, you also have to recognize what it belongs to in order to understand the price paid. I find it interesting that someone who did not own the car that it belongs to bid so high. I surely hope the car's owner was successful.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1920s-1930s-Brass-Body-Number-Plate-Packard-44221-/251682100737?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2047675.l2557&nma=true&si=UhhtzssuIDmTBH4dUt6XmmJWB40%253D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc

No one ever said that working on older Packards was an inexpensive proposition.

I don't get it. What does it belong to?

1930 734 Packard Speedster? Rare indeed!

Adding to the value is that it belongs to a surviving 734 Speedster from which it was probably separated many years ago!! Hopefully the successful bidder was the current owner of the car or that in one way or another it will be reunited with the car it came from.

...all of a sudden I don't feel quite so foolish for the purchases I have made over the years in support of my restoration efforts.

Unless Turnquist's data is wrong, it's not a speedster tag.

The closest it comes to is a 740 Dual Cowl (441) so it might come in handy to the owner of a fake.

In fact I can't find any 442 body style listed. Maybe it was some commercial job or a chassis only.

The listing for the boattail in the table of 7th Series Speedster body styles in Turnquist's book is a well-known and long-standing error, it has been there since the first edition, never corrected to my knowledge in any of the subsequent printings.

Its unfortunate that the current owner of 442-21 was not able to purchase the tag and reunite it with car it belongs to. There might be an interesting story about how it came to be separated from that car. One can only speculate on what the successful bidder intends to do with it, the creation of a new faux 734 Speedster comes to mind.

Given the acrimony against Turnquist, I'm surprised such details were omitted from the other popular compilation.

In all fairness to Bob, Morgan Yost says 422 is the speedster as well. Consistency in Packard body numbers never seems to happen.

So far I have two sources that say 422 and one source that says 442, but that source has more errors in it than a Mafia tax return.

When Kavenagh was alive, I used to visit him and heard reams about who and who had what against Bob Turnquist. If his number was wrong I can't imagine that it would have not been highlighted. Stranger things may happen so I'm always flexible.

The 422 number was picked up from Packard factory documents. Yost either picked up the wrong number from the same place, or from Turnquist's book. Turnquist never corrected any of the mistakes in his "revised editions". All he changed were the color photos in the middle.

There is one replica boattail speedster out there with the 422 number on its body number tag. The person that built it replicated the body tag (poorly, I might add), and stamped the wrong number on it.