New old style phones.... repros????

[Signguy]

Being new to phone collecting has gotten scarey when I see the number of repros and new phones being offered for sale.

In our 55 years of collecting other things repros and new/old style items are frowned upon and are vitually worthless. Not so it seems in collectable phones. The prices realized for repros is mind boogling. Phones being offered in colors never existing in the originals is NOT new old style in MHO.

What are the feeling of you well knowledgeable collectors?

Cheers..... Ell

[Owain]

Most repros are poorly made, flimsy, lightweight, inaccurate copies, and are designed for fashion purposes not as accurate reproductions.

We're talking kitsch not Chippendale.

It particularly irks me to see repro US 500-style phones with a 'GPO' swing tag.

[GG]

Crosley's repro of the WE 354 wall set is actually pretty darn good IMHO, and their repro 302 is acceptable.  Those are the best of the batch.  There are some other tolerably decent ones, and then a whole lot of dreck out there. 

BTW, you can't convert the Crosleys to rotary, don't bother trying.

Owain, I fully agree, I have seen those 500-styled repros being marketed as some kind of GPO repros, and that's just not cool at all.   

OTOH the repro red 746 DTMF set that was marketed with "wheels" on it for an auto insurance company, is actually a pretty decent copy of the original, plus or minus the fact that the bell gongs sound just like an American C4A ringer, and there's no place for a number label.

Also the repro Trimphones appear to be OK-ish, I haven't gotten my mitts on one yet (have two real ones, rotary; looking for two more, Decadic and DTMF). 

The way I see this stuff is, the repros serve to get people interested and then some of them will tend to go looking for originals.  But in any case they keep the overall designs in the public eye, which is good.

[twocvbloke]

I've seen a lot of those so-called GPO replicas on ebay, but I have yet to see original Western Electric-made 500 series phone branded as GPO equipment, so to call them "reproduction" or "replica" phones is just stupid, but then, they are imported from a certain far eastern country famed for cheap clones...

The "proper" GPO replicas though look like the real thing, aside from the pushbutton "dial" and the * and # buttons within the dial centre models, some you can get with a rotary dial that works with I think "light switching" technology (I presume it uses light to count the pulses to convert into DTMF tones?), but at least they look right, rather than pretend to be something they're not...

Not to mention, the 500 series clones, the cost of buying them compared to the cost of buying the genuine article, the clones are more expensive than refurbished real ones, where's the logic in paying more for a fake? 

[dsk]

I have this:



Of course the color tells everything, but the design ,shape and weight is close.

The replica has buttons, the handset is split in upper and lower parts and the cord is different.

The original from approx 1953 had probably cloth covered cord. 

If you open up the replica it is a single gong ringer, electronics, and iron weights.

dsk

[GG]

Yeah, that would be Pottery Barn.  I have one of those in light green, and an Italian version of your black one there, and the Pottery Barn version is very close.  If only they'd use double-gong ringers with two different tones...

One more comes to mind: the Italian replica of the AE 1A Monophone.  I've got a few of those I picked up cheap, since 1A Monophones in color are way out of my price range, and the repros can be made to look tolerable.  These are sitting in my In box waiting to get processed at some point. 

Now having admitted there are some repros in my herd, and that I think some of them are decent, I've probably alienated two or three people here who might otherwise think I'm a decent guy, but oh well... :-)

[McHeath]

I like repros.   

There I said it.

And I have a few.  The Crosleys are quite well made and very close copies, others not so much.  The question of what is a repro is even debatable in the phone world, are the last of the rotary dial phones like the Cortelco 500s and 554s, made in this century, collectable in any sense as we use it for early phones?  And then there are the Trimlines, still being made and labeled as an AT&T product, even got Golden Boy on the package.  What of them in 50 years?

In my mind the good of the reproduction phones is as GG said, they keep the older phones in the public eye, as well as they give people an option to use something like them who otherwise would not be bothered.  Even using a fake 500 by Crosley makes one aware of how good and handy a design the 500 was, and most folks I'm guessing are not interested in actually spinning a dial for day to day use. 

Yes it is crazy, in a way, to pay more for a repro phone than an original.  But the repro is more usable to more people. 

[Russ Kirk]

I like repros.  

There I said it.

Me too,  there is nothing wrong with liking good styling and form.  That is why some of the repos are based after good designs.  They don't make repos after ugly turkey phones!

Russ....

[twocvbloke]

This is a great example of the reason for my dislike of some repro phones:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/170673780222

Everything about it is wrong, the pictures, the description, the model number, it's just wrong.... 

Now if it was branded properly, labelled properly and described properly, then maybe I'd be more accepting, but like I said before, why buy a modern replica for more than an original... 

[Signguy]

 ..."but like I said before, why buy a modern replica for more than an original... "

My point exactly....$1000- $3000 for new or partly new phones!!!! Must be collectors (gatherers) out there with money to burn who don't much care about authenticity.  I certainly can see the merits of a working 1st class replica but not at those prices.

I can also appreciate the work that goes into the well reconditioned phone. These will always be a consideration and the buyer can  choose to invest or to decline. I guess I will be feeding at the lower end of the food chain for the time being until I educate myself to the "$ speed limit".

Cheers..... Ell

[GG]

Re. TwoCVbloke:  agreed, it's nasty when something like that is mislabeled.  OTOH, we know what it's supposed to be (plus or minus the dial being totally wrong), and it might (I haven't seen that one up close) be a decently made phone in its own right.

IMHO someone needs to produce 706s again, real ones.

And here on my shelf I have a bunch of phones by Centrel AEP (Portugal) that are basically 706s with printed wiring boards, one of them in a decadic pulse version, one in DTMF.   Now imagine a 706 (not 746) with a keypad.  But that was a "real one" being sold to regular telcos and PTTs, so it's legit.  Even has a mechanical volume control for the ringer, which is identical to the GPO single-coil ringer design, with bells having the same tones as the GPO version. 

[twocvbloke]

I've seen the odd repro phone at the market where I got my green GPO 746, and I never liked them, they just feel cheap and lightweight, nothing like the real thing, and one of them, the seller thought they had a really valuable original, and didn't believe me when I said it was a modern creation, but I guess you can't teach an ignorant person the truth....

I was wondering though if the repros have parts that could be fitted to originals to repair or upgrade them, I was thinking of getting a repro 746 sold by a UK store called "Next" (they usually sell clothes, but have the odd household thing too), just to see what the parts were like inside, but never did as I didn't fancy shelling out the money they wanted...