Jul 14 (edited)

1920 Post Card - Stolen Car Reward

I found this post card and it immediately peeked my interest. I had no idea that this kind of thing was ever done back in the day. A $50 reward sounds like a lot of money for recovering a four year old medium-priced car. I did see that there are a couple others out there from about the same timeframe. I wonder how long the insurance industry was using this tactic. I also wonder if it was effective.

1 / 2

Jul 14, 2026

Post your reply…

Replies (10)

· Jul 14

Something I did not know. Petaluma is where American Graffiti was filmed. Looks like the car was stolen in Fresno which is a long way from Petaluma in 1920. Maybe 3 or 4 hour drive today on the highways today, so 10 hours or more in 1920?

I wonder how many of those postcards were sent out and who got them?

(edited)

· Jul 14

Have never heard of postcards before. I also wonder how many were sent out? Newspaper advertisements in your local paper were common.

· Jul 14

3 holes in the radiator??! A Doctors car no less..

· Jul 14

I went and looked in the newspaper archive and there are thousands of these. This one should be interesting to Chris @Chandler-Six as it is a Chandler and has a chassis number 38848. 7 passenger car is a big one.

· Jul 14

And how did they know there were three holes in the radiator exactly? Perhaps some gunplay during the getaway?

· Jul 15

Is this detail supposed to identify the car?

· Jul 14

From what I can find of the post cards, it looks like most of them were addressed to the chief of police in other cities around the location of the theft. Must have been an early way for various departments to spread the word on vehicles to look out for.

(edited)

· Jul 14

A few others that are available on eBay.

1 / 3

· Jul 14

Imagine if you found one of these with the serial numbers that matched your car. It’s probably happened before.

· Jul 14

I hope Chris sees the Chandler one and checks is records.