Miscellaneous Route 66 Paper Items

There are collectors of restaurant and café menus, placemats and napkins, and there are collectors of the once-ubiquitous wall calendar but I am not one of them. In fact I don’t really know of any collector who collects these items solely from Route 66 businesses but I am aware that there are collectors who dabble in acquiring such items when they are discovered or become available at a good price.

Other small paper items from Route 66 businesses that are collectible include old business cards, decals, mileage cards, guidebooks, and matchbooks and matchcovers. Aside from matchbooks and matchcovers, and maybe business cards, I’m not sure that there is much quantity of these other items out there that would make a substantial collection so I think that many of the paper items from Route 66 are collected on occasion when the opportunity presents itself.

For me, my accumulation (I won’t call my tiny group a “collection”) of these small paper items is pretty humble and my knowledge of them is even less. Let me first comment upon business cards.

Business Cards

My knowledge of business cards, limited as it is, came from my personal working life which was principally in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. And, of course, I never, ever considered business cards "collectible" in the sense that we use that term today. If you had such a need, you or your employer would engage a printer and acquire a box of business cards which were an element of the commercial protocol of making contacts and informational exchange. I remember being excited when my employer presented me with my very first box of business cards when I was a rookie employee straight out of college! Business cards through this era were all pretty much the same. They were printed on a bright white cardstock that was firm but flexible, and always cut to 2” by 3 ½”. (Consistency in the size of business cards allowed the Rolodex© Company to design their ingenious gadget to handle them all.) Most business cards that I recall were printed with black ink only. Some, however, had an added color or two, usually required for the company logo. Later business cards, particularly ones from retail businesses I remember, could be printed on fancier or slightly colored cardstock. Nearly all business cards from the late 20th century were printed on one side only, the other being left blank. I do remember a few exceptions: some salespeople, known in my industry as “reps,” represented several product lines from multiple small companies when they came calling (as opposed to a salesperson who was usually an employee or authorized agent of one particular company and was dedicated to promoting just that one company’s products or services) and often the back of these “rep” business cards listed the product lines and companies that they represented. I also remember the business cards from some sales people who worked for companies based outside of the USA. One side of their business card would be in English and the other would be in their native language. (In the case of sales staff from Japanese companies, the back side of their business card would be printed with Kanji or Katakana characters!)

Well, that was then and this is now the 21st century. In the last decade anyone with a computer and printer can use software to print their own business cards using as many colors as they would like. Also on-line services allow anyone to create and order their own business cards too. People today often go “all out” with color and graphics and even include photographic-based images on their business cards. I have noticed that contemporary home-made business cards are sometimes printed on a thinner, more flexible cardstock than used in past eras. This may be because some home printers can not handle the heavier cardstock material.

And so was my limited knowledge of business cards until I began collecting postcards in the 1990s. I noticed that occasionally among the sleeved postcards in dealers’ boxes were these small things that looked like mini-postcards. What were they? On one side was a picture image like a postcard but on the back side was printing often somewhat analogous to a business card with a message or other information. The mini-postcard image was like a little linen postcard or a little chrome postcard. Most of these business cards were sized similar in length to the modern business card (3 ½”) but the height or short dimension varied more, usually in the range of 2” to 2 ½”. I eventually found full size postcard images with the same images of most of these mini-cards. (For some of these mini-cards I still have not seen a full-size postcard that matches the image but maybe I will in time.) I have talked to some postcard dealers at local venues and apparently there exists no official name for these types of cards. Several sellers informally refer to them as “miniatures” which is what I will call these miniature picture cards on this web site until I find out a better term for them. Of the miniatures in my modest collection, and unlike every printed postcard that I have seen, none have a publisher’s name indicated but I have to think it likely that the postcard manufacturers somehow made these cards. After all, particularly for the artist-drawn linen postcard images, the postcard manufacturer would have direct access to the image itself, the cardstock material, a process that allowed printing on both sides of the cardstock, and could prepare the picture business card easily and quickly. The funny thing, though, among the books and internet web sites on postcard manufacturers and printers, I have never seen a discussion on these miniatures so I can not authoritatively state their origin of manufacture. Does anyone know?

They are kind of cute and a bit different than a full-size postcard. (Of course, they can not be used as postcards since they do not meet the size requirements for the US Postal Service and they have no place on their back sides to write an address or a message.) I scanned 16 miniatures from Route 66 businesses below, both front and back, so you can get an idea of the variety of the back sides. You can see that some back sides have fairly straightforward business card type text, some have mileage tables, and one even has a map. The first 10 miniatures are linen (artist-drawn artwork and printed on a textured cardstock) and the last 6 miniatures are chrome (smooth surface and usually photo-like). The miniatures are arranged in their groups from west to east. All of these miniatures are approximately 3 1/2" long but the height varies from 2" to 2 1/2". I did trim the pictures of the larger miniatures down so they fit into the display array below. The miniature for the Cactus Motor Lodge in Tucumcari is like a sepia postcard. The miniature for the El Rancho in Barstow is like an early chrome postcard, using artist-drawn artwork but printed in a smooth-surface chrome process rather than being based upon a color photograph. I assume that most of these miniatures were printed at about the same time as their similar full-size postcard; that is, from the post-War years through to the early 1970s.

Linen Miniatures

Gwinn's Restaurant and Drive-In, Pasadena, California	Smith's Oasis Cafe, Barstow, California

Indian Trail Trading Post, Lupton, Arizona	Motel Milan and carrot fields, Grants, New Mexico

El Vado Court, Albuquerque, New Mexico	Leonard's Fine Foods, Albuquerque, New Mexico

Cactus Motor Lodge, Tucumcari, New Mexico	Oldham's State Line Station, East of Shamrock, Texas

Boyer Hotel Courts, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma	Manor Motel, Joliet, Illinois

Chrome Miniatures

El Rancho Motel, Barstow, California	River Valley Motor Lodge, Needles, California

Arcadia Lodge, Kingman, Arizona	Lins Cafe, Tucumcari, New Mexico

A. Lincoln Tourist Court, Springfield, Illinois	Streid's Restaurant, Motel & Service Station, Bloomington, IL

Simple Printed Business Cards

Below is a collage of simple printed (not picture) cards from some Route 66 businesses. I believe these are from about 1940 to about 1980 or so. The cards are images that I found on the internet and the collections of Mike Ward and my own. Many are the same size as the modern business card (2” by 3 ½”) and some are a smidgen larger. But some are even larger, about 2 ½” by 4”, and a few are larger yet so I guess we can say that business cards from Route 66 traveler-oriented businesses were not a consistent size in this era. Many were printed on a white cardstock (and most of these have aging or toning so the cardstock either looks dingy or slightly tan or yellow in color) but notice that quite a few cards were printed on colored cardstock. Most were printed using just black ink but there are examples where brown, dark blue, green and red ink are used. Several were printed in multiple colors.