Your piece of furniture is top of the line Hamilton removable type drawer. Probably used in a job printing shop that specialized in high-end card printing. Each drawer held a complete font of a particular type. It appears the dividers have been removed allowing the case to hold flat mounting boards. You can learn more about this relic by checking this site:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Job_Case
Also, check EBAY there are several listing showing the range of prices. Yours with that many drawers is top shelf. Thanks for sharing, it brought back memories when I started setting type using a "job stick" selecting one character at a time to set a line of type.