Not exactly Vintage, but surely a classic!
It seems as if there is little to no information about Sterling Payphones on the web. They were located in NY and provided payphones to the surrounding states, one being my home state, NC. I got lucky and was allowed to purchase a phone that was abandoned at an old gas station.
However, there were of course no keys to the thing, which led me on a search to find the golden keys!
The man from the gas stations C.O. I talked to says he could possibly get me a set of keys, but it may take him about a month due to the rapid decline of payphone routes.
He said that Sterling Payphones went belly up and left the corporation with a huge amount of debt.
allegedly the company's "contacts" are now in hiding and are literally nowhere to be found.
There are no pictures, documents, or webpages even relating to Sterling Payphones. It is truly a mystery at this point.
The payphone has relations to BELLSOUTH which leads me to believe that it's documents and related info have been deemed outdated. The phone itself may have not been very popular.
I am hoping that someone on this forum can help me track down some info about Sterling, and most importantly my keys! ;D ;D ;D
thanks,
PartyLine4
Does the payphone seem to be a standard style, or a proprietary design? I assume it is single slot?
Jim
Yes it is.
It has the coin return door on the bottom right, and the money box on the bottom left.
It seems as if nobody knows of this " Sterling " company!
Could it be a private branded GTE payphone?
Jim
So more likely a Private pay telephone operating company than a different Payphone manufacturer. Lots and lots of defunct coin operating companies out there. Sounds like an AE based Payphone but there are also lots of pay phones built on the AE platform by other companies and marketed towards the private coin phone operators.
Terry