Here is a fiberglass sign featuring the Howard Johnson’s Pie Man and Little Boy that we restored a few years back. These once graced the entrance to every Ho Jo’s in the country. Restoration is pretty straightforward; a very light sand or bead blast, body filling, sanding, priming, sanding again and finally, painting. This is [...]

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Sometimes I can’t recall where some of the things came to us from years ago when we were in the restoration business. Take for example, this Dallas Country Club 13th hole golf ball washer. This probably came to us as part of a larger collection we purchased. In any case, it was a neat little [...]

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Here is a theater ticket-shredding machine from the 1930s that we restored. Stands like these were positioned in a theater lobby and manned by a ticket-taker, or usher. They collected admission tickets to shred them as the patrons entered the theater. The tickets were dropped into the top of the machine and then the ticket-taker [...]

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The Modern Tool & Die Company was started in 1932 by three men: Theo Moll, Emil Jochum and Erwin Gerhard. A new division was added in 1953 called Midwest Industries. They made their first pressed steel pedal car in 1956 and rapidly built a reputation for high-quality craftsmanship. The pedal car they produced was the [...]

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In the 1930s the Good Humor ice cream company saw the need to be able to sell ice cream where people spent their time in the good weather—outdoors. Their solution was to send out a fleet of ice cream vending tricycles. They went directly to Schwinn and asked them if they were interested in designing [...]

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Here is a Vendo coin changer painted in Pepsi colors and fastened to a custom-made stand with custom graphics. Vendo put out the coin changer so you could get nickels in place of a quarter or a dime, primarily so you could buy a Coke from one of their soda machines. You would find them [...]

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