MOPAR Dealership Parts Ordering Cards 1935-58

[hursst]

Hello,

   Some buddies and I just bought a large stash of MOPAR dealership parts ordering cards. They were about to be destroyed.  Attached is a photo of one of them.  There must be a few thousand!  They appear to have come out of a dealership.  Each one has a part name, part number, how many per car, unit prices, and which cars they fit.  In the example I show, it covers model years 1935-46.  It also has a lot of fields you can fill out for orders, receipts, inventories, etc.  

 

   Does anyone know the exact use of these?  Do they have any use or value to anyone?  It seems like incredibly valuable information, but it also seems redundant with a factory parts interchange/master parts book.

 

   Any thoughts or insight are appreciated. 

 

-Chris

[roysboystoys]

I worked in a Plymouth / Dodge dealership in 1962 in the parts department. My daily start was to 

go through invoices and mark the sale on cards like those , and reorder what was needed.

Not sure they were the same as yours, they were 3' x 5" in file boxes.

I liked delivering parts a lot more.

[Dennis M]

Card like this were used well into the 1960's before computerization. The cards would be in a large tray vertically in numeric order. The card would show inventory & sales and have a min/max number. After a sale if stock hit the minimum the card would be flagged, usually with a small, colored metal tag that would stick up from the card deck. One could quickly go through the deck to create a periodic stock order. Common in dealer parts departments and auto parts stores. I used one in a NAPA store in the mid-60's.

[hddennis]

Dennis M,

I too worked in a NAPA store from 1965 to 1979 and worked with this same card desk. We used it as countermen to see if we had items in stock as well as keeping track of sales and inventory.

 

Howard Dennis

[hursst]

Thanks for the notes.  Interesting, this was before my time.  Who needs this nowadays when we have computers that take 50 clicks and take 10 times as long to look things up!