I've got an old Riley hood ornament. It's way cool and probably worth some money. I've scoured the Riley sites for a couple hours and can't find anything like it. $5 to the first person who can tell me correctly what year and model it came from. Your knowledge is money. It's like buying you a beer.
Sent this to a certified Riley nut who owns 7 restored Rileys, his first impression is that it isn't a Riley hood ornament. He also said that Riley's signature flair was the grill and not hood ornaments. But he also said the more he knows about rileys the less he knows about Rileys.. He thinks it could be off an early Alvis maybe?
I was seeing the same thing. They all seem to have grills with radiator caps on top. This one has a diamond shaped Riley badge that very clearly fits into the front of the hood ornament. I'm stumped.
It a Griffin radiator shell orniment from a '32-'33 Esses-Terraplane. It's broken and should have the enamel logo under the birds feet.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3556/3479783022_06a8907ca9.jpg?v=0 Early Essex/Terraplane (30-34)? Damn! Beat me to it! Wanna sell it to an Essex guy?
Winner winner! Nice call guys! Strange that it fits the Riley emblem so nicely. Yes, I do plan to sell it. Just didn't know what it was. Rich, send me your info brother and I'll get ya paid. Thanks again.
No need to send me the $$$, but you could send it to the Andy Dunn Memorial Fund PayPal account: [email protected] Rich Venza
This beats the hell out of a "what's it worth thread" now doesn't it. It's on the way Rich. Thanks again.
Proving rodders are class acts. We put a lot of history down into these pages one line at a time. So just to add one more, absolutely correct that griffin ornament with the broken front paw area can fit a '32-33 Essex Terraplane. It can also be from a '33 Hudson which used the identical griffin ornament but instead of tapering the paws around the E-T hexagon it flared around the Hudson white triangle. With it broken off there is no way of knowing. There were extremely few big '33 Hudson 8 cylinder cars built because of the deep depression year.
The Jalopy Journal
