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Old telephone stickers

Started by TelePlay, January 16, 2011, 10:37:49 PM

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TelePlay

Does anyone know of where or a link to someplace or someone who has taken photographs of any and all stickers found on rotary telephones from the 1970's back to when informational stickers for telephones were first created and posted them as a historical record of what was found on phones back in the rotary era?

Dan/Panther

I have several stickers that went either on the handset or between the cradle. MOST are either Fire, Police Ambulance, or Funeral Homes.
Most as you may be able to tell glowed in the dark.
D/P

The More People I meet, The More I Love, and MISS My Dog.  Dan Robinson

Dennis Markham

Removing all the stickers is a two-edged sword.  It's nice to have them to show the sign of the times as they have some historical value of their own.  Many of them have advertisements for places that no longer exist.  But usually we want a nice sticker free phone for our collections so we take them off.  I have started saving the unusual vinyl ones like Dan posted here.  The glow-in-the-dark funeral home stickers.  A lot of drug store ads too.  There's no saving the paper ones unless they are just left untouched on the phone.

LarryInMichigan

Please pardon my ignorance, but why did so many funeral parlors send out phone stickers?  I can understand drug stores, pizza shops, and auto repair garages, but do people really call the first funeral parlor whose number they find when someone dies?  It always seemed rather morbid to me.

Larry

Phoniac

Just my thought here but, I would think that would be there way of best advertising, because normally you wouldn't  look for a mortuary till you needed one. Thus them advertising would put them in your mind when the time came and odds are you wouldn't just look for the closest in the phone book. What da ya think?

Wallphone

I always thought that you would call the Funeral Home if the first number you called didn't get there in time.  >:(

Dennis Markham

Those are nice Doug.  I think I have only one of those that came on the Model 332 from eBay.  The phone was in Tennessee but the Ad ring was from a local drug store here.  Another aspect of collecting phones.

Wallphone

I always thought that it was funny that anyone would actually put one of these on their phone. Some people just can't pass up on something that is free. And some people (Me) will collect just about anything too. It's just the morbid side of my sense of humor.

cchaven

My only dial advertisement is this one, though its not a sticker.  You placed it over the dialcard holder and then a clear plastic cap fit over the top of that to hold it in place.  This one came out of New York City on a 302 I got last year.

Jeff

LarryInMichigan

IMO, the dial ring with the ad for the funeral home just below the one for the ambulance service is particularly tasteless.

Larry

Wallphone

I thought I read some where that in the olden days in some towns the Funeral Home also ran the ambulance service. I wonder if they had an ambulance that turned black if they were too late.
And as the story goes Strowger was a Funeral Director and the town switchboard operator was the wife of his competitor. So when someone asked the operator for HIS Funeral home, the Operator would ring up her husband. Strowger got so tired of this happening and losing so much business that he wanted to take the human element out of making a phone call so he went to work on developing the first automatic switching equipment. He invented the Strowger switch and then I think it was about seven years later he invented the first dial. Strange that the dial came second, I think the early switches worked by pressing a button so many times for the number that you wanted to "dial".

AE_Collector

Quote from: Wallphone on January 17, 2011, 04:29:01 PM
I always thought that you would call the Funeral Home if the first number you called didn't get there in time.  >:(

Yes but the first number was 911 and now you're expected to dial 7 or 10 digits to tell them you've died? They better work on a shorter number for funeral homes.

Cool attachements Doug! Hopefully you're collecting them because of your phone obsesion not in case you need the numbers in a hurry!

Terry

AET

I never remove the stickers off my phone unless they're in poor shape.  I have a few glow in the dark funeral handset stickers on my phones....
- Tom

Sargeguy

#13


Now that's an "Old Telephone Sticker"

I think old folks put these on their phones so that whoever found them would know which funeral home to call.
Greg Sargeant
Providence, RI
TCI /ATCA #4409

Wallphone

Here's the keys to the hearse.
Skeleton keys, (get it?)  ;D