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Ride in the country - found some phones!

Started by jiggerman, July 26, 2009, 10:28:56 PM

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jiggerman

Yesterday my wife asked if we could take a drive in the country with her 85-year-old mother to see her mother's birthplace. I thought that would be fun and we could stop at a few yard sales along the way. It's a small village in southern Quebec called "Notre Dame de Ham" population 400. Being a two-hour drive we packed a lunch and decided to have a small picnic once we got there. It was a very pleasant drive around the rolling valleys and meandering rivers. A very typical Quebec small town, one church, strip bar, convenience store and a flea market.  Yes a flea market.... my wife said "I hope you're not going in there". My mother-in-law just smiled and said "let him go in and we'll take a stroll around town".  Yeah, mother knows best! Apart from phones I also collect vintage stereo gear and this small place was full of stuff. I managed to buy two pioneer stereo receivers and three Dual turntables for $20.00. As I was loading the equipment in the car I asked if they had any old rotary phones. The women said there's some in the attic and pretty hot up there but you're free to take a look. As I was going up she shouted, " they are $3.00 each...$2.00 if you buy 5 or more ". There must have been 40 to 50 phones scattered around up there, mostly Northern Electric 500's. I would have bought them all but I think my wife would have had a fit so I settled for 7 of them. Two wall phones, 2 contempra phones, 2 princess phones with 1 adaptor and 1 Trimline. All the phones are Northern Electric except for the Trimline is a Western Electric. Nice find because the Trimline is the first Western Electric in my collection. I'll return sometime to get the rest! Thanks for reading my story, Jiggerman

Dennis Markham

Jiggerman, great story! Looks like you did pretty good.  You must have a good sized automobile to bring all that stuff home!  We'll now know where you are the next time you're AWOL.

McHeath

Gee great story!  And 2 bucks each, can't beat that price.  I can imagine your wife's shock if you'd tried to buy about 20 of them at once!! :D

Phonesrfun

Jig:

Kind of makes a person want to move to Quebec!

Great finds! 

-Bill
-Bill G

foots

Kind of makes me want that 5 line phone in the last picture.
"Ain't Worryin' 'Bout Nothin"

jsowers

Jiggerman, you need to thank your mother-in-law. She sounds like a fine lady. She lived through the Depression and she knows all about finding a good deal, I bet. It sounds like you had a wonderful day, with the scenery, the picnic and the phones. I had to laugh at the part about the strip bar. Your small town sounds like any number of small towns here in the South, except for the strip bar.  :) 

I also love old stereo equipment and old radios and radio-phonos, though space to store them is hard to come by. That's a nice old AM-FM console you have there. I've never seen one like it and it looks like it has Formica or something on it. It looks a bit like a European console from the 50s and 60s, but without the piano key pushbuttons.

The NE 554s you found are nice. NE used the thick chrome switchhook a while longer than WE. Let us all know if that white one is soft plastic. I don't see much NE soft plastic. I know they made them, but they're very hard to find.
Jonathan

bwanna

jiggerman, what a great day you had! loved your description of the little town, could  be any town here in mich. i did raise a eyebrow a bit at the strip bar. not that we don't have strip joints, just not usually next to the flea market & church :o

i didn't know what a comtmepra was until i saw your picture. the handset looks just like my northern telecom testset.

your mother-in-law is a wise lady. she knows you have to let your man do his own thing sometimes ;D  in return, she & your wife had a nice mother/daughter day.

thanks for sharing, donna

ps. i want to come to quebec, that flea market looks like an absolute treasure trove. the good stuff is always in the attic or the basement ;)
donna

jiggerman

Quote from: bwanna on July 27, 2009, 09:29:48 AM
jiggerman, what a great day you had! loved your description of the little town, could  be any town here in mich. i did raise a eyebrow a bit at the strip bar. not that we don't have strip joints, just not usually next to the flea market & church :o

i didn't know what a comtmepra was until i saw your picture. the handset looks just like my northern telecom testset.

your mother-in-law is a wise lady. she knows you have to let your man do his own thing sometimes ;D  in return, she & your wife had a nice mother/daughter day.

thanks for sharing, donna

ps. i want to come to quebec, that flea market looks like an absolute treasure trove. the good stuff is always in the attic or the basement ;)


I want to say my mother-in-law is a great lady! She raised eight children and the highlite of their week was to jam eight kids in the back of a station wagon and go for a Sunday picnic. Ask her to go to a fine restaurant or a drive in the country and she'll pick the drive every time. It's a real treat for us to pick her up and go for a drive. I'm lucky to have an understanding women although I do go overboard at times!
        As for the strip bars most of the work in these small towns revolves around forestry and the workers are lumberjacks, loggers and truckers. In the wintertime most of the Ski-Doo or snowmobile trails hook-up to these places. I'm not making excuses but that's the way things are!
        The handsets from the Contempra do look like the testsets now that you mentioned it. My goal is to find as many different colored Contempra phones that as I can get. There must be a dozen or more.
    A very pleasant night to all, Jiggerman


[/quote

bwanna

"As for the strip bars most of the work in these small towns revolves around forestry and the workers are lumberjacks, loggers and truckers. In the wintertime most of the Ski-Doo or snowmobile trails hook-up to these places. I'm not making excuses but that's the way things are!"



jiggerman,

i was just surprised one would be located in town. please accept my apology for sounding judgmental :-[

donna
donna


jiggerman

Quote from: jsowers on July 27, 2009, 08:36:02 AM
Jiggerman, you need to thank your mother-in-law. She sounds like a fine lady. She lived through the Depression and she knows all about finding a good deal, I bet. It sounds like you had a wonderful day, with the scenery, the picnic and the phones. I had to laugh at the part about the strip bar. Your small town sounds like any number of small towns here in the South, except for the strip bar.  :) 

I also love old stereo equipment and old radios and radio-phonos, though space to store them is hard to come by. That's a nice old AM-FM console you have there. I've never seen one like it and it looks like it has Formica or something on it. It looks a bit like a European console from the 50s and 60s, but without the piano key pushbuttons.

The NE 554s you found are nice. NE used the thick chrome switchhook a while longer than WE. Let us all know if that white one is soft plastic. I don't see much NE soft plastic. I know they made them, but they're very hard to find.
Hello,
           I really like the looks of the old 50's stereo equipment and it's a lot of fun playing them. Most of them have really good sound. This particular model is a  USA  Sylvania made in Ontario. The top does look like Formica but it's actually glass. It has a separate speaker that you don't usually see on 50's stereo consoles.
             The white NE 554 was made in 1967, not soft plastic. The soft plastic NE must be hard to find as I haven't acquired one yet. I probably wouldn't know a soft plastic phone if one bit me in the butt!  Every time I got a phone from the 50's or early 60's I re-read Dennis Markham's article on "Identifying A soft plastic phone".  Very informative, especially for a newbie like me. Jiggerman



Greg G.

Well, darn, I went for a ride in the country today just because I have an air condition vehicle and the temp here hit a record 103F (my apt isn't air conditioned, just a couple fans blowing the warm air around).  Only found one (very hot and stuffy) second hand store, no vintage phones to speak of. 
The idea that a four-year degree is the only path to worthwhile knowledge is insane.
- Mike Row
e

Phonesrfun

Try The Daily Planet on Phinney down by the zoo.  (Kind of a weird ecclectic 2nd hand shop.)  However,  they are probably not air conditioned.  They used to have phones but were a little high on prices.  I sent them an invite to the Seattle show, but they did not come.

-Bill
-Bill G

jsowers

Quote from: jiggerman on July 29, 2009, 09:12:18 PM
           I really like the looks of the old 50's stereo equipment and it's a lot of fun playing them. Most of them have really good sound. This particular model is a  USA  Sylvania made in Ontario. The top does look like Formica but it's actually glass. It has a separate speaker that you don't usually see on 50's stereo consoles.

Thanks for the info on your Sylvania, jiggerman. I've never seen one before. Two weeks ago at a Goodwill (a local thrift store) I saw an RCA Victor Victrola, from about 1958. In a mahogany finish wood cabinet and it had the separate extra speaker too. It's a record player only--no radio. I had to bite my lip and walk out the door! The main unit was $25 and the speaker was $15.  I went back yesterday--two weeks later. Would you believe the speaker (the rare part) is still there and the main unit is sold? I have no space left for those things and this one was huge counting the extra speaker.

I do have a Grundig Majestic console similar to your Sylvania. It's what I call Danish Modern and in walnut and blonde oak finish, with piano key controls and thumbwheels with little musical notes to control the tone. I need to take and post a picture. It was a wedding present to my aunt and uncle in 1960, but I think it's a couple years older. The main speakers fire down into a 45-degree linoleum covered area at the bottom front and the sides have tweeters. It has a Telefunken turntable. The sound was great on FM the last time I played it, but that's been a few years ago. I cleaned it up after I got it and I fixed a couple things (one of the phono door hinges was broken) and my uncle said it looked like when it was new, which was a great compliment.
Jonathan

Stephen Furley

Quote
As for the strip bars most of the work in these small towns revolves around forestry and the workers are lumberjacks, loggers and truckers. In the wintertime most of the Ski-Doo or snowmobile trails hook-up to these places. I'm not making excuses but that's the way things are!

Monty Phthon mode.
I never wanted to be a hairdresser, I wanted to be... a lumberjack; leaping from tree to tree as they float down the mighty rivers of British Columbia.

/Monty Python mode.