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New member in NC USA

Started by eagle, March 15, 2022, 06:49:01 AM

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eagle

Hi, all.  My name is Daniel, and I live in NC USA.  I have long been interested in communications of all kinds (telephones, CB radio, ham radio, packet radio, EME/ISS/NASA radio, computer networking, etc), and one of my hobbies has been to collect old (pre-breakup, typically 50s-70s) phones.

Attached are a few pics of my collection.  In my mind, the coolest phones in my collection are the AE candlestick, the US Navy WW2 shipboard phone (AE40 style), and the Princess phone.  My wife bought the AE candlestick and 2 other phones on a trip in 2020, for about $75 apiece, at antique stores.  I bought the shipboard phone for $75 or so about 20 years ago at an antique show at the county fairgrounds.  That was a lot of money to me back then, but I told my wife that I'd never see another one and I needed to get it, and I have never regretted that purchase.  I bought the Princess phone in Maine at an antique store for $12 about 15 years ago, and the shop owner said another lady had been looking at it... I told her that the other lady missed out. :)  A friend sent me a transformer for the Princess and yes, the nightlight works.  It still has its original ~25' cord with original 4-prong connector as seen in the attached pics.

Also pictured are a couple of gimmicks a friend gave me: a tiny yellow keychain phone model, a miniature gray telephone model (the dial does not turn), and a "dial-ease" finger saver.  My friend saw the dial-ease at a show and had to get it for me.  Not pictured is the woodwall phone that belonged to that same friend's grandmother; he gave it to me when he moved a couple years ago.  The display you see in the pics is in my mancave, and the woodwall phone is hanging on the living room wall.  There's nothing inside the woodwall phone box, but the box is in great shape. I should post a pic of it too.

Also not pictured are two wall phones I have: what looks to be a WE 554 set, and a WE 2554 set.

Right now I have no way to dial out on my rotary phones, as I have no pulse-to-tone converter. I was recently bidding on a set I saw on eBay that contained several phones (including a lineman test set!) that also included a converter, but I missed out on the lot.  Anyway, I am a VOIP user (Callcentric) and have multiple extensions around the house.  I have learned that the Grandstream HT802 supports pulse dialing, so I plan to buy one of those soon.  Yes, I'm still sore that I missed out on that eBay lot.

My goal is to have all of my phones working, and you can see from the pics that my candlestick is under restoration right now (see my other thread here). Most of my other phones do work just fine, but some do not and I will be looking forward to any guidance that forum members can provide on fully restoring those, in appropriate future threads of course.

As a bonus, also pictured are my watch and knife collections. I have many old knives that belonged to grandparents, great grandparents, and great great grandparents.  I also have my grandfathers' watches, and several watches of my own. You also get to see a small portion of my Compact Mac collection.

Thanks so much to Dennis for hosting this forum. What a great resource!  I'm glad to be here.

Edited because I goofed the attachments. Sorry about that.

Doug Rose

Welcome to the Forum Daniel. It is a great place for the Telephone Collector.....Doug
Kidphone