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Building a telephone database

Started by Babybearjs, January 02, 2015, 09:54:05 AM

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Babybearjs

well, I'm at it again! I decided to try making this database again.... and I need your help! some of the items I'm putting in are as follows:

record number: (autonumber)
Make:, model:, Color, Manufacture date:, Purchase Date:, Purchased From:, Current Value:, Restored: Y/N, Date Restored:,   etc, etc... what else should I have? I bought a refresher course on MS-Access 2010 so I could use it... and I'm starting to  rebuild the dbase. I'm hoping someone out there who remembers the phone stores could help me in the design... What did the Forms from that time look like, and what questions were asked concerning the phone and stuff like that. how can I cover all makes and models... parts, etc. I guess I'm going to have to lookup an aweful lot of old information...     so..... who wants to help????
John

AE_Collector

#1
I have had this for my collection for years except I was never a data base person. I got started with card records, then moved into Lotus123 and of course eventually moved to Excel where I have about 1000 line items.

For anyone starting out at collecting it is never too early to start keeping records because, trust me soon you wont remember where that phone came from or what you paid for it. I still keep adding more columns of info to my Excel sheet.

John you potentially need several columns for model number info as there are "common model numbers" but then the coding on the phones (think AE) and their catalog numbers etc. Don't forget colour both general colour and manufacturers name for the colour. Material made of, Dial, TT, CB, Intercom info, where you got it, when you got it, what you paid, who you sold it to, what you got for it, notes etc.

Terry

Babybearjs

the "coding" is the thing that is going to be the main problem... the codes consisted of model, color, feature, bell type, etc. and then there are the key phones, how do you code those? option, options, options... theres a lot of work ahead for me... I just got another W.E. 565HK and its in green... has a buzzer and bell, came with a 551 button on the side and a 6 wire dial. that's why I'd like to get my hands on some old paperwork that the phone companies used to use to order all this stuff.... so I can transcribe the information into my database.... what did their forms used to look like? what codes did they have to check in order to get a phone with all the extras... anyway, just entering in a color table itself is a chore.... and how many different colors did W.E. have in the 80's?? anyway, if anyone has PDF or JPG files of old paperwork from Ma Bell I'd like to see it.... so I can get an idea of how to organize this thing....
John

AE_Collector

I haven't worried too much about subtle little differences in a phone beyond a note in the comment field. There gets to be a point in Excel at least where you don't want a column throughout that will ultimately only be used for one phone in your collection.

While it is tempting to try to figure out every possibility before you start entering phones, you may never get started! There have been countless additions to my spread sheet on the fly over the years.

Terry

Babybearjs

so I am finding out. I started to enter the color codes and found that I have to do it my manufacturer...thus I now have 6 different tables of just color codes... I also found out, and didn't know this... that Automatic Electric Bought Leich Electrics back in the 1950's, thus the lack of information about those phones... but did notice that the color codes carried over into the AE sets... Leich electric used to use a letter suffix to define the color code, and that is found in the AE color codes too...  this project is going to be interesting once I start formatting the interface... how am I going to be able to access all the information in one area?
John

AE_Collector

Yes, Leich used to make phones for General Telephone companies and then in the 50's General Telephone bought the Garry Group who was the owner of Automatic Electric. Thus AE came under General Tel and became their manufacturer with Leich winding den their line of phones and helping to produce the new AE 80's (don't recall ever seeing a Leich branded AE 90) before Leich was connately integrated into AE and the Leich name retired.

AE did add letter codes some time in the 50's to correspond with their numbered codes. I never really knew why they bothered but you might be onto something, it could have been related to the merging of Leich into AE. Maybe Leich used letters and AE used numbers so they kept both when they merged. I would suspect that a Leich model 80 would have matching colours and codes to the AE model 80's but probably not with the earlier Leichs such as the convertibles. They had completely different colours than what AE had.

Terry

Bill

#6
I did this with my collection of antique radios for a while. Learned a couple things that may be helpful.

First, if you have a photo of the phone, stash it in a fixed place on your machine, and include a hyperlink to it in your data base.

Second, the column headed "Current Value" is virtually useless, since values change so much with time, and with the source of the valuation. If I see the item online with an asking price of $200, is that the current value? If I fight off several competing bids on eBay, and "win" an auction at $100, is that the current value? If I take it to a swap meet a year later, and can't get any interest even at $50, is that the current value? Fopr a while I tried to make a lot of notes in the Current Value entry, and they still didn't tell me anything about current value. I finally decided that it was better simply to list my purchase price and my purchase source. Then I would try to determine current value at the moment when I needed to know it.

"Current value" will be particularly troublesome because if you carefully record it for each item, you will soon be tempted to add an entry for Total Collection Value at the bottom of the page. It is easy to add this cell, after all, and will almost certainly give you a Total Value for the Collection that is wildly wrong.

Just my experience - take it for what it is worth.

Bill

Dennis Markham

Good comments, Bill.  That current value thing is a difficult shadow to chase.  Generally what I see as an asking price on eBay is not a current value.  If I check the "completed listings" and find what an items sells for,  that is a current value for that day but only for that one item.  But so many variables change the current value.  What person "A" got for an item is no guarantee person "B" will get that.  I think we see that a lot lately with the prices some of the harder to obtain Model 500's have been.  The buyer(s) may have put in a large bid to get this particular item but next time with that person not bidding, the prices come back down to earth a bit.

When insuring a collection of any kind, specifically phones in this case how do we determine replacement value?  We don't want to just insure our items for what we as collectors invested but how much it will cost to replace that item, if it is replaceable.  I'm pretty sure anything I have in my collection can be replaced.  So that value is a floating value.

What/how do the rest of you determine replacement value?  Do you modify that after a certain amount of time, like once a year? 

Bill your data base ideas to include a photo is very wise and organized.  I actually like to keep a folder for each of my collectible phones with many photos showing condition, dates, etc.  It's something that is time-consuming and easier to keep up than catch up.  I can't say I have all of them itemized (yet) in that manner.  Keeping a back-up of course in case of hard drive failure is important as well. 

I  hope I didn't drift too far off the topic with my comments.

Babybearjs

well.... the current value may be used to show what the phone could be worth in the future. basically, I use it as an estimate to get a dollar value for my collection, if you have several 302's and the "current" value may be $200.00 each, then it gives you a better sense of the net worth of that part of your collection.
John

unbeldi

#9
Quote from: Babybearjs on January 05, 2015, 07:26:20 PM
well.... the current value may be used to show what the phone could be worth in the future. basically, I use it as an estimate to get a dollar value for my collection, if you have several 302's and the "current" value may be $200.00 each, then it gives you a better sense of the net worth of that part of your collection.

I think when you start hypothesizing about the instantaneous or future value of your collection, you are missing out on better aspects of enjoying the collection, and are wasting much time updating, when you could be spending that time on learning about the  items, and you probably will not buy the items that you will come to enjoy the most at some time in the future.  It is by no means guaranteed that collection values will rise for ever.

Russ Kirk

I have created a DB of my phones. I show several items about the phone:
price I paid
Where purchased
Date purchased
And other details

Not the price I think it is worth.
- Russ Kirk
ATCA & TCI

Russ Kirk

Here is a small sampling of the DB I created for my phones.
It contains the facts on the phones I want to track.
- Russ Kirk
ATCA & TCI

Babybearjs

Good example! this is what I'm after except alittle bit more detailed. In my Dbase, I want to use as many original codes as I can, if possible. having the complete W.E. color code helps.... until you notice that AE used Letters that they used from Liech (I wonder who started that first) and that some phones just aren't marked.... on my AE 50 the code was L5000 BO5EB. no history of what the code means, except that the color code for black was "00". similar code are found on my AE 40's and in doing the research I found that SL stands for "Straight Line" referring to the ringer. since so much is incomplete, I have to use the last modern coding for the older unmarked phones.
John