GPO 250 linesman phone (yes its a dial phone, honest!)

[gpo706]

£8.50 - £10 shipping, didnt expect to win this - bidder 2 got cold feet after £8.

I've got 2 250A's - the difference is the "A"'s have headset sockets!

Not seen many 250's for sale, plugs a gap.

http://www.britishtelephones.com/t250.htm

[Kenny C]

how much is that in american money?

[gpo706]

$ 29.3383 USD

[Kenny C]

is that a good price? the top of the handset looks like an E1

[gpo706]

Are E1 handsets worth much?

Its similar to a  GPO 164 handset with a different flattened mouthpiece to sit on the base, and the press to talk strip button.

This is bakeliite, the dial alone is worth £20 upwards  ($32)?

[gpo706]

Here's a 250A for £43.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=320569849073&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT

[AE_Collector]

$ 29.3383 USD

Total price including shipping.

[gpo706]

Yup $30 including shipping, as usual with bargain finds the postage is more than the item, nut I kinda discount that when anybody asks - I just say "Oh it was a fiver!"

[Dan]

When someone says a few "quid" is that like Americans call a dollar a buck? Is a quid a pound? Always wondered, thanks.

[gpo706]

Yes Dan, quid = buck.

Or "notes"/ "squids" / "sheets" / "bar" / "green-ones" / "beer vouchers" /  - etc

A "Ton" is £100

A "Monkey" is £500

A "Score" is £20

A "Grand" is £1000

These still in parlance today in Scotland.

I don't get the American "clams" for buck atall though was it because clams were a buck each at one time?

PS found plenty more:

http://www.businessballs.com/moneyslanghistory.htm#slang%20money%20meanings%20and%20origins

[Phonesrfun]

Interesting that £100 would be a Ton.  Kind of shy by a factor of 20x.  Must be the colloquial slang.  Here a Grand is also $1,000

[gpo706]

Anybody here paid a "grand" for a phone, I like mine cheap and dirty and useable!

[Dennis Markham]

Then there is "C-Note" for $100, "Fin" for a $5 bill, and a "Sawbuck" for a ten.

[bingster]

 I don't know where "clam" comes from.  Even odder is "simolean."

[Dan]

I don't know where "clam" comes from.  Even odder is "simolean."

At one time, clamshells, in the form of many small ones strung together,
were a currency used by native Americans, mostly in California.
As far as "simolean" goes,

in early eighteenth-century Britain, the small silver coin whose proper name was sixpence was often slangily called a simon. I'm  not sure why, but a plausible origin lies in the name of Thomas Simon, a famous seventeenth-century engraver at the London Mint who designed some new coins after the Restoration in 1660, including the sixpence. (A New Testament reference, to St Peter "lodging with one Simon a tanner", led to the coin later being called a tanner instead.) Simon seems to have been taken to the USA and transferred to the dollar coin (the name is said to have been recorded in the 1850s). Having in mind the much more valuable French gold coins called Napoleons, some wit bundled simon and Napoleon together and made from it simoleon.