I was on a road trip yesterday, looking at a couple of signs and one of the stops had these old signs that look like liscense plate toppers? Strange part is that they are unmarked and have an inset spot with slots for little metal tags to fit into place? There were 6 of them, but only one of them had any metal tags in place.
Some kind of generic topper that you could put your initials into? What would it advertise? Connected to veterans because of the patriotic theme? Anyone ever seen some like it before?

They look like a generic patriotic WW2 plate topper to me. Maybe the AAF stood for American Air Force? I know that kind of sounds obvious the American part, being that they were used in America, but maybe they were for initials of the car owner as you said.
Darin

Probably Army Air Force

I have not seen license plate toppers with such narrow slots for the attaching bolt.

Found this along with a photo of an identical item: Posting was from 2010. Really doesn't answer your question but I thought that the information would be useful. I am not sure of the rules of posting links directly to this forum.

Doug

The following has been COPIED from "aaca.org"

License Plate Topper - WWII vintage maybe?

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I'm trying to gather some information about a license plate topper I have. It was in my dad's collection of automobilia, and so far I've been unable to find out anything about it, especially what's supposed to go in the middle opening.

To me it looks like it might be roughly WWII vintage. It was suggested that it might have been some sort of military insignia, and that letters or numbers went in the middle as identification. While my dad was in his 20's during WWII, he was never in the service due to a physical handicap, so I don't know.

Any ideas? Has anyone ever seen something similar? Is it military? Maybe used to display ration cards or info? Any help is appreciated! Thanks!

I was thinking American Air Force also.

If the Eagle was the "ruptured duck" version I would guess they were made for returning vets from WWII. Still might be something the VFW or some other service related organization had.....

If it were from a Vets Association, they might have made toppers with 4 spaces for vets from The Marine Corps and Coast Guard.
(USMC, USCG) 3 spaces for Army Air Forces, US Army and US Navy...
(AAF,USA,USN)

Just a thought.....

The slot is bigger than it looks! I'm sure it would accept a 1/4 inch bolt.

I don't believe there ever was an American Air Force. It was the United States Air Force.

As for toppers, there is an aritice in the latest "Check the Oil" magazine, written by J. D. Reynolds, that shows the above toppers. Unfortunately, he didn't talk about each of the toppers, he just showed every topper he ever found that was from the WW11 era.

My "guess" is that they were just patroitic pectens.

Jack Sim

In 1941 the name was changed from the United Stated Army Air Corp to the United States Army Air Force and in 1947 it was changed to the United States Air Force. The beginning was in 1907 as part of the signal corp. Looked it up on google. Mitch

Don't the Eagles look more German? like maybe a AAF car on a base in Germany? 1945-47 time frame?