All matching numbers 52/500 arrived today. What a letdown.

[Sargeguy]

I can beat you Dan/Panther.  My 500 arrived today dated 7-52.  The 7A dial is 7-52, the ringer is 7-52, the network is 7-52 the receiver and transmitter, the handset and even the caps are all dated 7-52.  Everything is 7-52.  The cover appears to be soft plastic.  The phone is a little dusty with a couple minor dings to the soft plastic housing, but otherwise in beautiful shape. It even comes with a vintage pre-area code dial card.   

But....

It's been converted to modular and notched! 

[bingster]

Notched! NOOOOOOO!!!!!

Don'tcha just hate that?

[Dennis Markham]

Greg, is the case dated inside?  It's unusual to see a notched soft plastic case, but I'm sure they're out there.  Too bad.  Maybe some day a replacement will come around.

[Dan/Panther]

You are right Sarge, you win, thats one contest I'm glad I lost...
D/P

[McHeath]

Ouch!!  Someone of course thought they were getting all modern and doing the right thing by modularizing that phone. 

Sadness.

I've been seeing some phones here locally with a strange modular conversion in the handset.  The original hole for the handset cord has been enlarged to about 1 inch across, and a special plug inserted that has a modular shaped hole so the old handset can be reused.  I've even seen them in colors, green and white come to mind.  Was that common?

[Dan]

I saw that treatment on a light blue 500 @ a yard sale last year. I have an all matching 1958 green 500 that is notched in the back and converted to modular. The date is on the front inside the shell. Mt question is, I know the dates in a circle near the top center are definately a sign of a hard plastic phone, but are dates along the front edge of the housing a guarantee of a soft phone, or do hard plastic phones have dates there too? It smells a little like a soft phone, but not as strongly as my older ones.

[Sargeguy]

There is no date on the inside but it doesn't have the circle with the date in it, so that would make it a soft plastic, correct?  It also has Bakelite plungers.

[Dennis Markham]

Dan, there are hard plastic phones that have the date stamped along the inside edge, so you can't always determine hard or soft plastic by that stamping.  Generally speaking dates after June or July (with exceptions) of 1959 are hard.  I have a nice white 500 shell that I bought off eBay that is stamped along the front edge.  It is dated 10/1959.  I thought it may be soft so that's why I bought it.  It's clearly hard plastic.  So when dealing with dates in mid 1959 or later, I would say MOST are hard plastic.  But COULD go either way.

[Dan]

Thanks, I will always store June 1959 in my brain as the changeover date (approximately) to hard plastic.

[phoneguy06]

Hi there,

Speaking of weird handset configurations, I'm sure I mentioned in another post a long time ago that my '89 hardwired 500 actually has the hardwired handset cord shoved into a G15 modular handset, because ITT discontinued the manufacture of G3 handsets in the early 80s, but did not stop manufacturing hardwired phones. The openings on the phone's case are the correct rounded ones, and not notched, thank god.