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DaveB845 wrote:
I am curious to see if anyone has retained their Packard dealer tags, decals or license plate frames that originally came with their car? While many, including my father, hated driving around with "free advertising" showing on the back of the car they had just paid for, some owners might have been proud enough that they bought their Packard at a prestigious dealer in town. As a youngster, I paid attention to those pot metal tags that required some holes to be drilled, showing that the car was a local purchase. But in other parts of the country, some might be less offended by displaying a metal license plate with the dealer name and town included. I dare say that probably no mere decal or sticker has survived the six or more decades, but unused stock may still be archived somewhere.

Looking through the thousands of dealer names in this registry, more than a few seem to resonate with my memories. Top mention must surely go to Earle C. Anthony's multiple stores in California, plus Frost and French (LA), Noll (Pasadena), Albrecht-Burke (my St. Louis hometown), Wendell-Hawkins (Houston) and the many "Packard of....(insert the large city name) entries. Have any of the collectors in this forum bothered to save or collect these dealer bits of history?

My Esquire was shipped to DuBois in Arlington VA, but may have actually been delivered by McNey in WashDC because I found a nicely preserved license plate frame tucked behind the rear seat. My Executive was an Anthony car, delivered in Los Angeles, but that's only because of the shipping documents. No other clues, except two filled-in drill holes in the sheet metal under the trunk lid. Of course, on the pre-war cars, there was always the car's vehicle "patent" plate that you could show to your friends to prove its origin. But you'd have to open the hood to do the impressing.