Antique Car Print - 1949 AACA Handbill

Treasures from THE AUTOMOTIVE COLLECTION at Lost Highways Archive & Research Library. By exclusive arrangement with The Grand Review.

Print size 24 x 18, and consciously formatted to work with a standard size store bought frame, or custom framed as you see fit.

Founded in 1935, the Antique Automobile Club of America or AACA as it is more commonly known has been the standard in antique and vintage cars. For collecting. For restoration. For their research library. For their chapters and meets and rallies around the country. I've been a member for at least 20 years, which makes me still a kid in that realm.

Their beloved Hershey Fall Meet is the largest antique car show and flea market in the world. Run by a remarkable network of oldsters, they manage the logistics of an event so huge and multi faceted it'd make your head spin, and through wind and rain and miscellaneous nightmares manage to make it happen, and happen in a delightful manner, every year since 1955.

I try to go with some combination of family and friends every year, and can spin many a yarn about our adventures and misadventures there.

This large handbill likely originated as an insert in the Sunday Philadelphia Bulletin or Philadelphia Inquirer. It was considerably faded and lackluster, but with a little love and a dash of digital alchemy we were able to reinvigorate it to the poppy gem you see here.

Touted on the flyer as 'America's First Major Post-War Auto Show', it was being held at the Commercial Museum complex, later known as the Civic Center, where I happened to see my first real rock show as a kid. Canned Heat and the Youngbloods headlining, with a new band, the Chicago Transit Authority and opening on what was likely their first national tour, the Santana Blues Band. We had to leave before the Youngbloods, to catch the last Septa bus home!

• Handmade item
• Materials: Art stock enhanced matte paper, archival ink
• Made to order
• Only ships within United States.

SHIPPING

All prints are shipped in a sturdy mailing tube for $8, which covers postage, tube and S & H.

BUYING MORE THAN ONE PRINT? Add a second print or any number thereafter of this or any other prints in our catalog and shipping is still just $8, total!!!

International shipping is available and reasonable. Please contact us for details.

A NOTE ON OUR PROCESS, OUR CHOICES AND THE QUALITY OF THE GRAPHIC CRAFTSMANSHIP THAT GOES INTO OUR PRINTS.

Every print we deem exciting enough to present to the public via our Etsy store or available here at our studio has gone through a number of steps. The first of those is always discovering and falling in love with an obscure image, always an original that we can hold in our hands. That image is speaking to us, sometime screaming “Don’t leave me here. See what I am, what I was, what I can be, what I SHOULD be!”

There is a real sense of excitement involved, and a great many smiles and knowing grins when we make that deal and bring that ancient print, that battered photo, that scrap of ephemera that contains some scrap of genius from an unknown commercial artist home with us, knowing already how we mean to approach its restoration.

There is the heady promise of a further hunt just as real as what drags a weekend fisherman out of bed at 3AM to work a favorite brook as we start our research, looking for that great backstory, and both ready and willing to tumble down as many rabbit holes as are revealed to us to get that story.

Then there is a meticulous digital restoration that is as often as much fun as riding a vintage Moto Guzzi on a winding coastal road. I don’t care if that sounds crazy, it really is like jumping in the saddle! So many choices, so many chances to take to subtly or spectacularly give new life to otherwise permanently obscure images.

This dedication and the ongoing rush of joy in the accomplishment of it, and the opportunity to share the results in our studio and here on Etsy, is the fire of passion that keeps these engines roaring. We make every effort to ensure our customers are not just satisfied but thrilled, and we happily stand 100% behind our work.