Early 1900s "Pop’s Auto Service" smaltz sign “Horseless Carriages and Contraptions Fixed”

Jan/Feb 2024 Edition
Issue #32, AutoMobilia Resource Magazine
By Robert Wolfe

​Early 1900s "Pop’s Auto Service" smaltz sign “Horseless Carriages and Contraptions Fixed”

​I found this 40"x32" smaltz (sand/glass-textured) sign in the attic of an old garage in New Hampshire that was to be torn down. It’s a treasure harking back to a time in America at the beginning of the automobile era, when servicing automobiles was just beginning to be an industry. The cars of that era were one- or two-cylinder automobiles, and they were called horseless carriages. 

The wording “contraptions fixed” on the sign refers to that time period where if you didn’t have a car, or “horseless carriage,” you were still thinking about how to get from point A to point B faster. So, people who were anxious to get a move on built contraptions – things that people built out of bicycles or wagons or anything they could conjure up in their mind to make them go faster.
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Early car service stations worked on cars and all sorts of newfangled devices designed to automate transportation. The sign dates from around 1904 to 1905 and is valued at approximately $3,200. It is NFS (not for sale), as I plan to keep it as a part of my personal collection. It’s an incredible sign that says so much about this fascinating time in history and early automobile advertising.

Rob Wolfe

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