General Telephone Sign and Hand Fan

[KaiserFrazer67]

Hello everyone!  Starting to come out of "hobby hibernation" a bit after yet another hiatus.  A temporary plant shutdown for the next few weeks has freed up some hobby time for me.

I managed to pick these items up on eBay this past December and January.  As I have mentioned several times in previous posts (and reiterated in my avatar and signature), our telco here in Oakfield (Wisconsin) was General Telephone/GTE until the Bell Atlantic acquisition which became Verizon.  Frontier is the main successor to most (not all) of Verizon's landline business, especially here in Wisconsin, and that is who we have now.

I finally found a decent-for-the-price General Telephone sign on eBay last December 20th, which I picked up for $50.  Not too bad considering I've seen much worse for much more.  I made a wall bracket for it out of a 12" piece of 1" x 1" aluminum L-channel from the scrap bin where I work.  A little later, on January 5th, I bought a nice General System advertising hand fan for $22.50.  It was a much too interesting piece to pass up!

Here are the photos of the sign in my garage, and of the hand fan.  I sure wouldn't mind finding a really nice example of the AE panel phone featured on the back!

[EDIT]  At some point I will be replacing the Crosley retro-phone on the wall.  It's there for two main reasons: (1) With the ringer shut off, it doesn't draw extra ring voltage (there's a working black WE 554 on the other side of the garage, a photo of which I will post sometime later), and (2) it can handle the brutal winters here in an unheated garage.  I will be getting and installing a Viking RG-10A ring-voltage booster sometime in the future so I can hook up and enjoy more of my collection.

Enjoy, and I hope everyone's doing well out there.

-Tom M'ski from Oakfield, Wis.

[RB]

Nice!

[Doug Rose]

Very Nice Tom....Doug

[.....]

Looks good, glad to hear you're back at it.

[Stormcrash]

Very nice!

Just a note though Frontier did not take over all of Verizon's landline operations. Frontier took over most former GTE territory + Verizon West Virginia (formerly C&P Telephone of West Virginia). Verizon still operates landlines in most of their former Bell territory (except West Virginia, Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire) and some pockets of former GTE territory in the northeast (ex Verizon North in PA and Verizon South in VA and NC)

As another aside Frontier Northwest (originally GTE Northwest) had been sold off as Ziply Fiber

[KaiserFrazer67]

Very nice!

Just a note though Frontier did not take over all of Verizon's landline operations. Frontier took over most former GTE territory + Verizon West Virginia (formerly C&P Telephone of West Virginia). Verizon still operates landlines in most of their former Bell territory (except West Virginia, Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire) and some pockets of former GTE territory in the northeast (ex Verizon North in PA and Verizon South in VA and NC)

As another aside Frontier Northwest (originally GTE Northwest) had been sold off as Ziply Fiber

Correct; but they did here in Wisconsin.  (I've corrected my post accordingly.)  Now I hear Frontier is filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy...  and I'm wondering how much longer I'm going to be able to keep my good ol' reliable POTS line.  Nobody cares about us phone collectors much...