When I read about this on the C Body Forum, I thought, “The odds of this happening are approaching Powerball levels!” I myself would have passed right by it. But somebody knew the secret, and made the buy of a lifetime . . .
There are at least 3 factors at play here:
- The item in question survived in excellent condition;
- It was made available for purchase at an estate sale;
- A person went to the sale, knew what it was, and bought it.
Here’s what I’m talking about:
In 1955, Dodge offered a super-deluxe 2-door hardtop model with special paint and trim. Christened “La Femme”, it was designed to appeal to upscale women. A previous CC post provides more details.
Standard equipment included a shoulder bag purse complete with matching accessories–and our lucky estate sale shopper just happened to find one–with the accessories! After finding it, he scoured the entire sale looking for more car stuff. But there wasn’t any, and no ’55 Dodge La Femme automobile in sight either!
Purse and accessories on display at the Walter P. Chrysler Museum.
Special seatback compartments were designed to fit the purse.
The La Femme model was offered again in 1956, but the unique purse was dropped. According to this article I found, only 600 La Femmes were produced.
And, like the ultra-rare silver tumblers and perfume atomizer that came with each $13,000 1957-58 Cadillac Eldorado Brougham, little trinkets like these quickly get lost or damaged, especially when the cars become used-car “has-beens” and traded to new owners.
It’s hard to know what the value of a fine example of the 1955 La Femme purse and accessories would be. I’m presuming our buyer paid just a few bucks for it. But apparently there was an eBay listing in 2011 for just the purse with a Buy It Now of $4500! Whether it actually sold for that I can’t determine. A surviving 1955 Dodge La Femme is rare enough, but having the car with the purse and et cetera would, I imagine, significantly enhance the car’s value.
Did I ever tell you that I found a $20 bill in a 50 cent tobacco tin at a garage sale once?
The world is filled with hidden treasures; you just have to be in the right place at the right time (and know what to look for). If you were at the sale, would you have known what it was?
As a frequent estate sale shopper, I love this story. I wonder if the sale contained other automotive paraphernalia? Sometimes hobbyists are drawn to estate sales that tend to contain items related to their interest, just in the hopes that there’d be something obscure like this there. And congratulations to the buyer! I wouldn’t have had the foggiest idea what it was.
My best automotive-related estate sale find was when I came across a sale that had lots of old car magazines. I bought several boxes of 1970s & 1980s magazines for $12. On eBay, such magazines sell for $5-$10 apiece.
My favorite non-automotive find occurred several years ago when I bought a wooden, two-drawer file cabinet from an estate sale in Washington, DC. I just needed a file cabinet, and this looked to be well-built, in good shape, and was only $10. When I was maneuvering it out of the estate sale, the back panel surprisingly came open… revealing a secret drawer. Why? Evidently the house’s owner had been a former CIA employee. Sadly, the secret drawer was empty, but the estate sale folks laughed that they would have charged a lot more if they had known, and would have called it a “Cold War Secret File Cabinet.”
Several years ago during a bathroom renovation, I demolished a sink and cabinet and discovered a blank envelope taped to the bottom of a cabinet drawer. It contained five $20 bills all dated around 1988. My Dad and I took a break and headed out for an upscale lunch financed by our demolition!
My best deal at an estate sale was a $.25 gas can with $2.50 worth of gas in it.
When I was about 11, I bought a wooden salad fork and spoon with (black) sterling handles for a quarter at a church rummage sale.
Too bad Mary Kay (has there been a CC about her cars?) wasn’t around to rescue La Femme (what a name), but I think the Avon Lady should have made the effort.
Funny that you mention Mary Kay – I saw a Mary Kay Cadillac CT6 last week… it’s the first Mary Kay car I’ve seen in years:
They used “burgundy” colored Pontiacs for a # of years.
My city has some high end neighborhoods and a propensity for curbside free cycling.
Some of my favorite items were sourced accordingly including my exquisite 1964 Blaupunkt console stereo with a perfect walnut cabinet.
FM stereo in a tube chassis and mid century modern styling. Worth about $1000 to the right person.
I love the story about the handbag. I think vintage handbag collectors and vintage car enthusiasts have virtually no Venn diagram overlap so it’s a miracle someone knew what this purse was.
What an amazing find! Post a picture if you have one. Someone else’s junk, eh? Crazy.
My b.f. and I love and collect old electronics, anything old and interesting anyway. I have a Zenith console TV with working remote, a Zenith Allegro stereo system (with matching speakers) that I use daily, and he has a Magnavox tube type console stereo that we got working. He even repaired the broken arm and it plays records! Finding tubes and such online has become like chasing down parts for a vintage vehicle. They’re out there, somewhere. You become eternally grateful to whoever had the foresight to not trash that stuff when it became obsolete.
A Blau console stereo? I’d have grabbed it without knowing a clue as to it’s value. At least it sounds very cool.
Makes me wonder how many items like this at sales that were overlooked and eventually wound up in the dumpster.
The vast majority. My dad has been looking for La Femme bits for 30 years, they don’t exist. Even worse, it’s one of those things you’d keep when you sold the car “just in case” – like taking the fenders and chain guards off an old Schwinn.
My dad’s doesn’t have the factory seat backs or any of the accessories… The old seat fabric was falling apart when it was “stored” 30 years ago, doubt there’s even enough left to use as a sample these days. But there’s one out there still in one form or another!
I’d never seen a closeup of that purse. It’s stupid by 1955 standards. No ’55 lady would carry such an odd-shaped handbag! It looks more like a flapper-era flask or gun case.
Dodge should have made a lighted vanity in the glove box, as Studie did later.
Does anything about the La Femme look like something most women would want? As I’ve noted in earlier CC posts about this car, I doubt any actual women were consulted when planning it. And I doubt any women if asked, even in 1955, wished their next car would have a box on the back of the front seats that could hold a weird-looking purse and a make-up kit. The Dodge La Femme is a clueless man’s idea of what women want in their cars.
Of course, that was then. Now both the car and the handbag are awesomely cool, for either gender.
I’m curious to know if that estate sale was in Michigan? If so, I know where the car it belongs to is. It would be sad that they have parted ways as the people who inherited the estate likely don’t know that this would have belonged to the car in the deceased’s collection.
Thank you!
Wow. What an interesting find. I would have gone right by it myself.
As a thrift store junkie, I am pretty sharp regarding men’s wear from that era. However, as a man, I am more familiar with objects for men, than for women. I have an eye for antique men’s neck ties. I have quite a few expensive men’s designer ties I snagged during thrift stores. My favorite catches are Countess Mara men’s ties that are numbered and autographed by the fashion designer. Also men’s antique cuff-links, tie bars/clips and smoking items.
Consequently, it would have been the unusual shape of this purse and the hardware used that would have caught my eye. Not knowing that the La Femme came with a designer purse, I wouldn’t have known what it specifically was. Now that I do, it would have been a snap to recognize. I really don’t recall anyone writing up these details regarding the La Femme. I did not know it came with accessories detachable from the car.
I am also a huge fan of the 2003-2004 Mercury Marauder, but didn’t know until this winter that the cars came with their own black leather riding jackets.
At first I thought it was a ladys flask.
That would be more likely during Prohibition.
That was my first impression, also.
I definitely wouldn’t have known what it was! I assume the purses weren’t serially numbered, and there’s no way to know if a given purse originally came with a given car.
Some years ago a guy bought a box of papers for $20 at an estate sale in the Chicago area. He didn’t really look them over and figured that if they were interesting, cool, and if not, he was out only $20. Turned out they were original documentation from the 1919 Black Sox scandal: the players’ signed confessions, the letters notifying the players that they were out of baseball. I didn’t follow the story long enough to know what the papers sold for at auction, but presumably the finder made a nice profit. I’m not remotely a sports fan, but I appreciate the historical interest of the papers.
I once bought a used book at Goodwill, and there was a booklet of fairly recent unused postage stamps in it. Hey, I took what I could get!
I recognized it instantly as over the decades I’ve read so many articles, with pictures of the accessories, about this Dodge model in the classic car magazines I’ve subscribed to (and accumulated). Because the purse is such an odd shape that also helps you remember it.
This piece reminds me of my childhood ability to recognize every detail of the cars on the roads and streets in the 1950’s when there was so much distinction between makes and models. I remember a particular love for lettering/script on the car trunks that identified options such as Powerglide, Fordomatic, Overdrive, et al.
Today, given so much uniformity and repetition of shapes and styles (and just a handful of colors), I frequently cannot identify one make from another, let alone models and options. I saw a new Jaguar sedan this past week that I thought was maybe a BMW or a Lexus or ????. Hand to get up close to see the badges.
Great find.
PS. A callout: Didn’t Zackman’s family have one of these Dodges as a used car? I wonder if any of these accessories survived when they acquired it.
Ca. 1960 my very non-gearhead grandmother, b. 1890, often said the cars all looked alike. If someone said that today, I’d say they had a point.
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/09/automobiles/i-didnt-recognize-you-from-behind.html?searchResultPosition=1
I knew what it was as soon as I saw it.
I wouldn’t have known what this purse was and I have had some major yard sale scores. The trouble with the Dodge LaFemme is that it was supposed to be a Chick car but Chick’s didn’t like it and they don’t usually collect cars so that means that it’s a Chick car that guys are supposed to want now because it’s old and rare. It’s pink too. I can appreciate the find but even with the rare purse, I’ll pass.
Cool story! I could not identify the purse from the lead photo. I thought it was a waste basket at first.
However, I did know about the LaFemme and the accessories. I have a photo of the car in my collection taken by a friend when the two of us visited the Walter P. Chrysler Museum in 2009.
We had only 2 hours to tour the museum, so I chose to only see the displays on the first and second floors. He chose to visit the basement as well, which is where the LaFemme was on display.
A Goodwill store that shall remain unnamed located at the confluence of rich and poor neighborhoods has been very good to me over the years. About 15 years ago I purchased an original mixed media artwork by a local artist that I still enjoy to this day for $25. When I checked the value a month later it was worth high four possibly low five figures. A couple weeks ago I spotted this original well known design enthusiasts 1980’s Tizio desk lamp by Italian company Artemide for only $15 bucks. I checked Ebay and after I cleaned it up and put a new bulb in it I could have listed and sold it for $400 bucks easy. However I passed on purchasing it and decided to wait a couple weeks before coming back and sure enough it was sold. I did that with the hope another young adult like I was 25 years ago without much money to find this Golden Ticket item. They will surely enjoy and cherish it’s unique design far more than I would.
Yep, that was very recognizable. As noted above, the LaFemme was a car created by many to appeal to women, in the early days of target marketing. About the same time, Lionel came out with a “Girl’s Train” with a pink steam locomotive. Which fared about as well as the LaFemme did.
I toured the sadly now-closed WPC Museum in 2008 with my then girlfriend, but I don’t remember the LaFemme in the basement. We both would have loved it. There was a very nice gentleman on duty who offered to accompany us and answer any questions, not knowing my family sold C-P for 34 years. After I explained the first three cars we saw to my GF, he said “I think you know what you’re doing.”
I would not have known what that was, so good on you for seeing it. I love little oddities like this.
What a great find of an accessory that was extremely rare to start with. Don’t know what Dodge was thinking back then with the LaFemme. Even though women at that time were starting to drive in great numbers (boosted greatly by the availability of automatics and power steering), men still made most vehicle purchasing decisions. I can’t see many men back then buying a car marketed solely to women that they would never drive.
Now, a really cool find would be a set of those magnetic shot glasses that came with ‘57 and ‘58 Cadillac Eldorados. The glovebox door would lie flat when opened and had magnetic recesses to hold the metal shot glasses. Nothing like a snort or two to make the drive more pleasurable.
I never comment here but…
My dad has a ’56 La Femme, bought it in the early 1990s. Currently hiding out on a Gulf Island in a tarped building. Had the D-500 package, complete with a 315 hemi and a Carter 4bbl if I’m remembering correctly.
There’s been most of two engines in his basement since about 1992 if I had to guess. I’m probably the only person that still knows what any of that stuff is. Ha.
Definitely a unique little moment in automotive history – a Car for the American Woman, designed by a bunch of men in a board room who never bothered to ask any women in any detail what they’d want in a car.