I didn't realize that we didn't have a specific topic about this, just numerous mentions of it in other topics.
I'm wondering if anyone knows if this is all history now? Others please add your knowledge to this topic.
Bob Prosser and the Turtle Lake Teleohone Company planned on going into the Phone refurbishing business, maybe a retirement plan Bob had. He began buying thousands of Telco surplus takeouts and storing them in barns on his property. Many came from the Canadian Provincial Government owned Telcos of Manitoba Tel and Sask Tel. Some estimates were that he potentially had a million phones in the end.
I'm not certain if Bob died or just lost interest but nothing happened with them until eventually someone wanted to buy or sell the property. People went there digging through the barns for occasional great finds amidst the more mundane stuff.
I have these three pictures that I was sent from inside one of the barns.
Terry
My only connection to Turtle Lake is a Collector Will Downing who was making regular trips there from around Milwaukee I think. This was 10-15 years ago now. He said it was either 6 hour round trip or was it six hours each way...John?
Will was searching the barns for specific items of interest saying that since all takeouts were sent there from some Telcos, the loads had occasional much older phones mixed in with the mostly newer stuff. I asked if he could watch for AE Stylelines for me. I was at a point where I had just realized that I had kept virtually no AE Stylelines in my collection and thought I had better get to work on finding some. Will reported back that he found a corner of one barn where Stylelines seemed to have been all put but they were primarily all wall sets. PhoneCo had scooped up most of the more saleable Desk Stylelines a number of years earlier.
Will reported that there were no lights inside the barns and it was very difficult to determine what colour and the condition using a flash lite. I asked how many he thought there were. He said maybe 150-200. I asked if he had any interest in just hauling them all out and back home with him to box up and send to me to which he agreed. This made it easier for him to not have to spend time looking for the best of each colour and type and he could spend the time boxing and shipping from home instead. And I could then go through them leisurely finding the ones I wanted for my collection and eventually selling off the rest. Will made a little cash for his effort but he was extremely generous in his pricing to me plus he had a friend who worked for FedEx who got a great deal on shipping! An opportunity like this would never come around for me again.
Almost all of these Stylelines were the early versions with round handset cords with the BIG plugs like Trimlines and the heavy cast metal bases, not the later plastic bases. I was amazed at the condition of the plastics, virtually none of them had any discolouration as though they were either never really in service, maybe from disllaysvin phone stores showing all the colours.
Here is a spot where I wrote about it in my phone collection topic:
http://www.classicrotaryphones.com/forum/index.php?topic=8222.msg89482#msg89482
And below are the boxes of phones when they arrived and then unpacking, cleaning and sorting. Finally the end product in both desk and wall Stylelines. Not all in the collection pictures were from Turtle Lake but a large majority are.
Terry
Her is a gray keyset cord on a Sand Beige AE 186 for Christians project. This is zoomed in on the very first picture I posted above.
Terry
Oh yeah, thanks for pointing that out, Terry!
I believe those are silver satin instead of Gray. I have a 10 button keyset that has the original cord, but it was painted silver satin when it was updated to modular. I think they did that the match the modular single line line cords used around the same time.
Even so, I think one of those would look great on my phone!
Paul Vaverchak and Ron Knappen both got a full semi-truck load of 3-slot payphones from there about 30 years ago. I remember how they both complained to me how the other guy got the best deal!
Milwaukee to Turtle Lake by way of interstate is about 4 1/2 hours (310 miles) each way. Turtle Lake is just a short drive to the north east from Minneapolis.
It's not the end of the world but you can see it from there.
Somewhere I think I have a disk of the entire collection for sale. I have heard many stories from the guys who were there and on the scale of what was there. It was in a huge dairy barn. Ron Knappen and Paul Vaverchak bought a lot of phones from that warehouse some of the stuff I sell on ebay was from that warehouse.
Here are some photos from 2003 and a few from the clean-up in about 2011.
The last 3 pictures look like telephone engineering in PA I was there at the end and brought a tractor trailer full home.
~
These pictures lead me to believe that the term "rare" as often applied to old phones is not always entirely accurate.......
Sure glad I got all (? Most?) of the Stylelines out of there first.
There also used to be an eBay Seller at or close to Turtle Lake selling phones he got from there. I know that Will and the friend he travelled there with each time were selling the treasures they found there on eBay.
Terry
Payphone Installer: Was this where Jim Engle, Bob Barrett, et. al., got the old payphones they were selling at shows about 15+ years ago?
Chuck
Quote from: Payphone installer on January 28, 2018, 12:08:46 PM
The last 3 pictures look like telephone engineering in PA I was there at the end and brought a tractor trailer full home.
You mean "looks similar to..." IE: there isn't any confusion as to whether these pictures are a turtle Lake or a different location?
I recall hearing at the end of Turtle Lake something about selling the remaining phones by the pound and them being loaded into containers like pictured..is that what is usually referred to as Gaylord's.
Terry
Chuck the phones at Turtle Creek were being bought for many years by many collectors. Back in the 1990's I was in a barn that was chalked full of rare phones that all came from turtle creek. Really rare stuff. The guy told me he paid off his house by refurbishing and selling phone from turtle creek. Bob Prosser owned title creek. There was also telephone engineering in Scranton PA it was also packed full of old telephones most of the Wanamakers and lots of other small Gray pay stations came from telephone engineering. I personally bought lots of stuff there. I passed on pile of new old stock lime green and orange Stromberg Carlson telephones,pile of W/E new old stock 354 covers still wrapped in the paper. Piles of 444 W/E business sets. There were floors and floors of stuff like this.
The payphones that Bob Barlett,Dick Pitzer and myself got came from Germantown New York from a place called BECO which was another telephone refurbisher. Collecting telephones has been a blast over the years,if you are willing to network and get out there and look the stuff is still out there. The price is cheaper then ever on lots of the stuff,many say it's dying. I see it as changing. Jim
.....and of course, its back east.... wonder how much stuff was lost to the dumpster???
Quote from: Babybearjs on January 30, 2018, 12:29:15 PM
.....and of course, its back east.... wonder how much stuff was lost to the dumpster???
It is (or possibly was) everywhere.
Ron in the Pacific northwest, Vern and Steve in the southwest, Ray in Michigan, Bruce and others in Canada, and others have shared similar stories. I was lucky enough to sniff out some small caches in rural Maine in the late 1990s.
As Jim said, persistence and luck can pay off. It's hard to believe we've found everything yet.
well.... I was lucky enough to catch the Surplus Center back in 1978.... got my first AE #50 for only $9.99... should have grabbed some AE 40's as well but caught those later.... got my first WE 302 for $7.99 through them too... but, those days are over... surplus center sold out all their phones and stopped carrying them... now mostly selling Ag equipment.. (and Parts) the main problem for me was that I didn't really start playing with phones until AFTER the breakup... by then all the phones had been sold off and I didn't know of any sources until I happened across Phoneco back in 1986.... and of course, the phone companies had already liquidated their inventories to Phoneco and others... it would have ben nice to walk into a electronics thrift store and find a hoard of telecom equipment at pennies on the dollar.... the closest I got was finding 5C black Vinyl spaded line cords... but then, I really wasn't looking.... other then collecting the AE 87A phones... those really did come in handy back in the day.... But, to find a whole warehouse stocked to the rafters with phones, no such luck... now to find something like that, Yes.... I can see it... thanks to Cell Phones.... so many people have dropped their landlines for portability that seeing a warehouse full phone phones could be a reality... but where... not in Idaho... at least not around here in Boise... Mountain Bell and the other must have had a policy about recycling old phones... because I'm pretty sure it all went to Denver....sad....
Quote from: Babybearjs on January 31, 2018, 02:11:49 AM
... surplus center sold out all their phones and stopped carrying them... now mostly selling Ag equipment..
Ag....that's the Chemical Formula for Silver?
Quote from: Babybearjs on January 31, 2018, 02:11:49 AM
After the breakup... by then all the phones had been sold off
.... But, to find a whole warehouse stocked to the rafters with phones, no such luck...
Turtle Lake clearly existed long after the breakup and provided a LOT of phones to a LOT of people up until just a few years ago.
As far as I know the remaining phones went for metal recycling so not quite as bad as into the dumpster or landfill. But....they're gone none the less.
Terry
Wall Street Journal article:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB112890280105864097
(Screenshots below).