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

[r1lark]

Perhaps they are better described as inventory cards, where the parts department would keep track of how many of each part they have on hand, what their historical usage has been, etc. Note at the upper left, the "minimum" and "maximum" which would be their stocking levels. Instead of the nice automated ordering systems of today, it was all by hand. They depended on the parts guy to flag somehow that some more of a specific part had to be ordered when the stocking level got down to (or below) the minimum level. 

 

Pretty cool nostalgia!

[hursst]

Thanks for the feedback, that makes sense.  I bet these were faster than computers for the guys who used them.  Cards never broke down of froze.

 

Chris