Before there was eBay

[Owain]

I had hardly any phones before Ebay (or the internet). It wasn't just buying them, technical info was hard to come by.

I got given a phone as a child but with no info on how to wire it up I used the components for 'soldering practice'. (I still have the case though which got fitted to a new base and made into a working phone again.)

I remember badgering someone at a BT Careers event to get circuit diagrams of our Plan 105/107 systems
http://www.phone-pages.org.uk/plan107.htm
and then getting one for £50 from a small ad in "Exchange and Mart".

A junk shop provided a Tele 332 for £60.
http://www.britishtelephones.com/t332.htm

Some occasional charity shop purchases.

On way to work early one morning noticed a phone sitting in someone's recycling box  That's now mine.

Ebay doesn't have the fun of the hunt in the same was as serendipititious findings.

[twocvbloke]

Before ebay, I wasn't old enough to buy anything online...

Thinking about it, it's nearly 10 years since I first bought something on ebay, I bought a Fujitsu-Siemens pentium 75 base unit to turn into a small server, but never did cos I just got bored of the idea...