Dave Lange writes:
"I liked the postcard with its traveling museum. The date range for this vehicle (and the card) may be narrowed down considerably from the 1900-20 provided. The former is an example of the ubiquitous Ford Model T. It has a nickel-plated radiator rather than the earlier brass variety, so the truck is a 1916 model or later. The font used in the card's title was in vogue from roughly 1910-25. Given that the vehicle had already logged over 100 thousand miles, I suggest that the postcard probably dates to the period 1918-25."
Great observations. Thanks! I cropped the postcard image to just contain the vehicle and tried a Google image search hoping to discover a web page or newspaper article, but came up empty. But with Dave's year range I went back to Newspapers.com and tried again - bingo!! Among the first hits was a December 15, 1924 article in The Orlando Sentinel.
-Editor
The "World's Greatest Travel Car" carried wounded ex-servicemen around the U.S. and the world. "To date the "car" has been in 72 different foreign countries, and the sides of it are covered with coins and curios of the various nations..." The vehicle is indeed a Ford, donated by Henry Ford himself. The article notes that on completing the tour the Ford would be displayed at the Smithsonian for two years before going to the Free Museum at Washington, apparently as a memorial to the disabled vets of WWI.
So - where is/was the Free Museum at Washington? The words in the name are common and Google was no help. Wikipedia doesn't have a page for it. And where is the Travel Car today? Does it still exist?
-Editor
To read the complete newspaper article, see:
https://www.newspapers.com/clip/88597608/sergeant-sanford-oare-travel-car/
To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:
The Travel Car Coin Museum
(https://www.coinbooks.org/v24/esylum_v24n45a13.html)
Wayne Homren, Editor
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