I think he is looking for a cell formatting solution so that he can type in 41A3 but the cell will display 41-A-3.
Sorry, ZeR0, but my only suggestion would have been ##-@-# as a custom format but apparently that didn't work...
Edit: What if you just formatted it as a text cell with @@-@-@, does that work? If so, you would (probably) lose the ability to put them in numerical order, so it is up to you if the gains are worth the losses.