Primarily Petroliana Shop Talk Forums Shop Talk Petroliana Forums General Petroliana Discussion Help with Hastings cabinet. What is this?

My dad picked this up at an auction. Can someone tell me what this would of been used for? I realize it isn’t terrible old. Any help would be appreciated!

parts book rack

Counter catalogue holder.

I have about a 1000 ads showing all types of items like this, but for the life of me I cannot determine what is the top/side/bottom of the second picture you are showing. Please read the instructions on how to post a picture and you will get a lot more responses. So many of this type pictures show up here that I just pass on if haft to copy the picture, put it in another program just to flip it over to see what it is.

Jack Sim

The second photo is an upsidedown view of the catalog rack. The rows of bars and pins are the binders that hold the catalogs in the rack, behind the advertising panel that faces the customer. Each pair of bars is connected by 3 pins that pass through the catalogs, like 3 ring binder school paper. The catalog binder sections each can be easily lifted out of a rack to show a customer a parts diagram. The catalog racks became obsolete when computers took over.

Even though it may not be very old, the Hastings man logo is pretty cool. Looks like the advertising front panel could be separated from the rack base and then displayed as a sign on the wall. A history purist would say you should never take something apart to display only a part. A pragmatist would make the best use of his space by displaying signs without the poles, racks and equipment that held them originally.

No.