{
  "id": "news-1956-03-15-4",
  "title": "\"License Plate BEND EMBLEMS ... 49c\" in a 1956 hardware sale",
  "publisher": "The Bend Bulletin, 1956-03-15, image 4; Historic Oregon Newspapers",
  "sourceClass": "primary",
  "url": "https://oregonnews.uoregon.edu/lccn/sn90051770/1956-03-15/ed-1/seq-4/",
  "accessedOn": "2026-09-11",
  "notes": "A Houk-Van Allen sale advertisement lists \"License Plate BEND EMBLEMS\" at 49 cents, regularly 98 cents. A named, priced, mass-market object called a Bend emblem, in a decade with no other dated specimen.",
  "record": "https://bendemblem.com/archive/news-1956-03-15-4/",
  "evidence": {
    "id": "news-1956-03-15-4",
    "kind": "history",
    "date": "1956-03-15",
    "summary": "A 1956 Bend hardware advertisement offers license-plate \"Bend emblems\" at 49 cents, a named mass-market object from the archive's emptiest decades.",
    "findings": [
      "Houk-Van Allen of 916 Wall Street, Bend, advertised \"License Plate BEND EMBLEMS\" at 49 cents, regularly 98 cents, on March 15, 1956.",
      "They were listed as an ordinary auto accessory, between a bicycle and half-price seat covers.",
      "This is a named, dated, priced object called a Bend emblem from the decades in which the project holds almost no dated specimen.",
      "It sits in a local tradition: the Bend Iron Works offered to cast the emblem in aluminium for automobiles in 1922, and an Elks emblem motor meter invented by two Bend men was manufactured in Chicago in the 1920s."
    ],
    "limitations": [
      "The advertisement carries no image or description. Whether these plates bore the Bend Emblem, a different device, or only the town's name is unknown and is not settled by this page.",
      "\"Bend emblems\" is the advertiser's wording, not the newspaper's, and not evidence of any connection to the Emblem Club.",
      "No surviving example has been located. This is a lead toward an object, not the object."
    ],
    "objects": [
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        "sha256": "ecfa590255d4cc9deda0d5a439248ffc1fbfcc82dd038494774025cb04090210",
        "url": "https://oregonnews.uoregon.edu/lccn/sn90051770/1956-03-15/ed-1/seq-4/",
        "accessedOn": "2026-09-11",
        "role": "Received source bytes"
      }
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    "images": [
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        "page": 1,
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        ],
        "title": "“License Plate BEND EMBLEMS … 49c”, Houk-Van Allen, March 1956.",
        "rights": "The Bend Bulletin · Historic Oregon Newspapers, University of Oregon; documentary reproduction, excluded from the project artwork license.",
        "color": true,
        "width": 1000,
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    "origin": null,
    "sourceIds": [],
    "review": {
      "status": "image-reviewed",
      "method": "Complete source page and selected crop inspected visually; OCR used only to locate the passage.",
      "reviewedOn": "2026-09-11"
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  },
  "measurement": [],
  "appearances": [],
  "appearanceLeads": [],
  "exhibit": {
    "id": "news-1956-03-15-4",
    "title": "Forty-nine cents, at 916 Wall Street",
    "intro": "Between 1916 and 2001 the project has almost no dated specimen of the emblem. Here is one selling for less than fifty cents.",
    "body": [
      "Houk-Van Allen, 916 Wall Street, ran a sale in March 1956. Hand saws at $1.29. Illuminated auto hood ornaments, $1.98. Large-size luggage, $9.95. A Huffy girl’s bicycle with training wheels, $49.95. Auto seat covers at half off. And between the bicycle and the seat covers, set in the same type as everything else on the list, is the entry this record exists for.",
      "A license-plate emblem is a small metal plate or topper bolted to a car's number plate. They were sold by the thousand in the 1950s, usually carrying a town's name or device, and Bend evidently had its own — stocked as ordinary auto accessory alongside the hood ornaments, marked down from ninety-eight cents.",
      "What the advertisement does not do is show it. There is no picture and no description, so this page cannot tell us whether these carried the Bend Emblem itself or some other device for the town. What it establishes is that in 1956 a mass-produced object called a Bend emblem was on sale in Bend for forty-nine cents — which makes it the most findable object in the archive's missing decades. Bend had a trade in this sort of thing: the Bend Iron Works was ready to cast the emblem in aluminium for automobiles in 1922, and two Bend men invented an Elks emblem motor meter in the 1920s, made in Chicago."
    ],
    "related": [
      "news-1941-08-20-8"
    ],
    "date": "1956-03-15",
    "collection": "emblems",
    "publication": "The Bend Bulletin",
    "images": [
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        "name": "plate-1",
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        "width": 1000,
        "caption": "“License Plate BEND EMBLEMS … 49c”, Houk-Van Allen, March 1956.",
        "alt": "A newspaper sale advertisement listing hand saws, hood ornaments, luggage, a bicycle, and a line reading “Reg. 98c — License Plate BEND EMBLEMS … 49c”, above the store name Houk-Van Allen, 916 Wall Street.",
        "credit": "The Bend Bulletin · Historic Oregon Newspapers, University of Oregon",
        "sourceUrl": "https://oregonnews.uoregon.edu/lccn/sn90051770/1956-03-15/ed-1/seq-4/",
        "color": true
      }
    ],
    "quote": "Reg. 98c — License Plate\n\nBEND EMBLEMS … 49c"
  },
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      "title": "“License Plate BEND EMBLEMS … 49c”, Houk-Van Allen, March 1956.",
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