Diamond DX Gas Sign Original pre 1933 Advertising (01/23/2011)

Home > Worthopedia – Price Guide > Advertising >

Diamond DX Gas Sign Original pre 1933 Advertising

Terms and Conditions for using our site

Diamond DX Gas Sign Original pre 1933 Advertising

Sold For:

or Sign In to see what it's worth.

Sold Date: 01/23/2011
Channel: Online Auction
Source: eBay
Category: Advertising

Great original sign dating before 1933 likely mid twenties. Sign measures 59 3/4 x 35 3/4 The Diamond DX station was in my town (Centralia Illinois) on the corner of 2nd and Poplar and was a station for many years. Today the station has been remodeled and is a auto repair business. I believe this sign came from this location as I found - purchased it out of an old barn about four miles from where the station was. Condition is evident via photos, good considering age. Shipping will be actual shipping via UPS amount indicated is approximate. History of Diamond DX:

The history of Mid-Continent is somewhat fuzzy, due to the extreme complexity of the businesses involved in its formation and the limited availability of records from this period.

It all started with Josh Cosden of Tulsa , Oklahoma in the mid teens. Mr. Cosden is briefly described in this article from the Harvard Business School :

“Known as the "prince of petroleum," Cosden is credited with establishing Oklahoma as a major oil producing state. Starting with a small parcel of land, he built a $35 million oil business in ten short years. Through his oil discoveries and exploration, he almost single-handedly quadrupled the population of Tulsa at the turn of the century.”

Mr. Cosden established Cosden Oil & Gas Co., building its new headquarters building (called the Mid-Continent building) in 1916. Mid-Continent Petroleum Corporation was organized as Cosden & Company, a Delaware corporation, in 1917. Various Cosden holdings were re-incorporated as Mid-Continent Petroleum during a forceful restructuring that took place in 1925. It was at this time that the Mid-Continent building in Tulsa officially became the headquarters of the Mid-Continent Petroleum Corporation

The company’s stations began selling gasoline at stations under the Diamond name at some point in the early to mid- 1920s. The stations sold motor oil, kerosene, Diamond gasoline, and an anti-knock version known as Nevr-Nox. This antiknock compound must have been something other than Ethyl at the beginning, because it was touted as being “non-poisonous” on some versions of signs and globes from the 1920s through 1933.

In 1933, “D-X” gasoline was introduced. It is theorized that this name was in reference to “Diamond – X,” suggesting an “X-factor” or unknown substance in the gasoline that made it superior to others. The D-X name became more prominent, being applied to more than just gasoline. Eventually, by the end of WWII, stations were rebranded from “Diamond” to simply “D-X.”

In 1955, significant changes took place in the company. Because Mid-Continent was mainly a holding and marketing operation, it proved beneficial for them to merge with a heavily production-oriented company. In this case, that company was Sunray Oil.

This merger resulted in two new companies. The Sunray Mid-Continent Oil Co. was the production-oriented entity, and the D-X Sunray Oil Co. was geared primarily towards marketing and distribution. Stations continued to operate under the D-X name (changed to DX in or about 1957). Sunray stations added the D-X logo to the bottom of their logos at the time of the merger, but by 1962, all were rebranded to DX