Primarily Petroliana Shop Talk Forums Shop Talk Petroliana Forums General Petroliana Discussion opinion on authenticity

Ebay # 380337196244 ...SHELL AIR SIGN

looks authentic and old but not as rare as thought the last pic has over a dozen signs on the roof wow what a great find!! and 2000 plus pos feed i want one just not at 1000 dollars!!!!!

Looks real but almost to good to be true! I've been looking in barns for years but never thought to look on the roof. LOL That barn more then paid for the farm! WOW

agreed. I always look on the roof actually I've found a bunch like that usually they have tar on them. actually there's 4 Pontiac signs on a barn 1/2 mile from my house I've been trying to get

I'll be the first to admit that I know nothing about this sign, however Ron Bettin showed pictures of an original he has on the Cheesepit and it doesn't look like the one on E-bay. His note on the pit refers to some reproduction signs that were being sold as originals, so it sounds like these WERE being reproduced at some time in the past.

Pictures Ron posted....

Too bad the picture of the signs on the roof doesn't show any detail on those signs.
I've seen some known originals and they are like the one Tucker posted.

I count about 25 signs in the photo. There must have been at least 4 times that on that one roof side alone. Crazy.

If the entire barn roof was covered with these "rare" Shell air signs then there may be 1500 or more of them available. Not so rare any more. In about a year from now the price should be down to about 50 bucks a piece.

JMHO

I wonder if someone staged that photo with repro signs? I've seen originals sell in the $3K range. Some unscrupulous sellers would go to great lengths to deceive with that kind of money at stake.

I'm also suspicious of those signs being covered with dirt on that roof. They would likely have dirt where they are overlapped, and the part that's open to the weather would be clean. If you've ever torn off a shingle roof you'll know what I'm talking about.
B&W photo that shows absolutely no detail doesn't do anything to relieve my suspicions.
If that barn roof was covered with original signs where are they? There should be thousands of them around that are weathered and faded unevenly.
Could be legit, but I'm not convinced. Especially since the sign on ebay is a lot different than known originals.

...photo looks right to me...you can see the places where the roof paint was masked off by the other signs...doesn't look like they're being that careful taking them off, either...

"If that barn roof was covered with original signs where are they?"

...if you had a pile of these, would you flood the market with them? I don't think I would have posted the roof photo until I was down to my last few signs...

who cares about the photo the sign he is selling is a repop end of story

If it is supposed to be a recent discovery of the signs on the barn roof, why is the picture black and white? Looks like they are trying to hide something.

My Q is...... how could they ever get their hands on that many signs in one location.

...I really don't have a dog in this fight...I'm just not hearing any definitive proof that the sign on eBay is a fake...

...is the discovery of the signs 'recent'?...that photo could have been taken 30 years ago...or printed on a black and white printer (they exist, y'know)...

...the signs could have come from the sign factory, from a Shell warehouse, who knows?...if Shell decided 'we're not going to bother with having a sign that we have to drag in and out every day to tell the public there's an air hose here', after they had ordered the signs, they sat in the warehouse until someone needed room and a 'thrifty' worker took them home to shingle his roof...there's also no indication that the entire roof was covered with those signs...maybe he just patched a hole...the silver roof paint and rust stains make me think it's more likely that it's a real sign...

...I know there are signs that were produced by different manufacturers at different times, using revised artwork...just because Ron Bettin has a different one doesn't mean everything else is fake...he does add neon (and holes) to signs that never had it...

...I remember a few years ago that there was discussion on Oldgas about some fake Shell Air signs, but I couldn't find the thread...seems to me that the sign in question was different than the one on eBay...

http://cheesepitstop.com/viewtopic.php?t=5163&highlight=shell+air

I'm not very good at posting links but here is a quick look at the pit discussion. The sign in question on that site looks like the one on E bay. I don't think Ron posts here anymore but maybe he would be the one to ask if your thinking about buying the one on E bay.

Same way this chicken Coop was done;
http://oldgas.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?u...true#Post140656
Or the 3 garages that were covered w/ SEASIDE signs in Summerland, Calif. years ago. They were retrieved from the company dump area.

"I wonder if someone staged that photo with repro signs? I've seen originals sell in the $3K range. Some unscrupulous sellers would go to great lengths to deceive with that kind of money at stake." lastgas15 ........... i have to ask the same or a close question. in this age of digital cameras(which have been around for awhile now),why such a crappy picture?even if an old photo,you would think there would be a much better quality pic. available. i mean,would you have taken only 1 picture of a find like that?and also kind of surprising that no one has heard of this find before? just seems kind of fishy to me and just my humble opinion

Years back,a friend of mine was in Mo. and came across a salvage yard that was closing. The roof on one of the building had the 2 piece shells,both gasoline and motor oil,nailed to the roof. The owner had turned them over before installing and after installing he applied the silver tar roof paint. Brad got the signs and we kept a set of both each and then sold the rest. You had to lay them out in the yard and line up the tops and bottoms. The match was not perfect and some were faded more than the others. You can see one of them in this Easter picture of my grandson on his egg hunt.

I bumped up an older post about these signs, titled "everything has a story". Wierd thing, when you click on the link in that old thread ,it takes you to the current auction. Whats up with that? At that time wasnt the story something like they wouldnt fit on a pole right or something? Thats why they were called back to the factory? Or am I just imagining that?

It looks like it has a new owner
as it has hit reserve ...(1200.)

Just ended at $1700.00
Bill

Brought .... 1700.

Vietnam (at least when my husband was stationed there in the 70's) they would use flattened Coke and other soda cans for roof shingles, and I imagine there were buildings with oil can roofs.

My question about the pic is this. Before the tornado we had, in addition to other outbuildings, a 60' x 30' tobacco barn with a tin roof dating from the 30's. I have friends with bigger tobacco barns and I imagine livestock barns are even bigger. So not taking in account the pitched roof, lets assume my barn had at least 1800 square feet of roof area (with the pitch I would guess at least 3000). How many overlapped signs would that have made? Like HuskyBob and others had mentioned, was the sign located in a manufacturing area where someone would have access to that amount of signage?

Where they the types of signs that could have been melted down? (this may be a really stupid question--I don't know what this sign is made of and even if I did, don't know enough about signs. Plus had trouble looking it up on ebay--but I was just wondering because of my next Q)

Would that tonage of signs more likely been recyled by the manufacturer if they could have been melted down?

Nicole, Signs are Porcelain coated Steel Both sides.
Eons ago I salvaged cans w/ permission from a fallen down shed/workshop building. They were using 1qt cans as Roof Shingles. Top & Bottoms were removed & seam cut, then they were run threw a home made press made w/ old Studebaker transmission gears to give cans a washboard impression [UUUUUUUU]. Each can could be staggered one or several grooves & still would interlock.
There were thousands that had been pressed & stacked but had been rained on & rusted together [Polly, Gilmore, Sunset, Mohawk, Hancock, Seaside, Signal, Hy Flash, Beacon, Pennzoil, Texaco, Mobil, SHELL, Douglas, Richfield, PDQ, Rio Grande, Union, etc etc. ALL West Coast Cans].

After the father or son had made deliveries to Los Angeles area, they would stop at stations on their way home & collect the empty cans to make into shingles.

Pretty ingenious really. That's being thrify and green all at once.