WE 500 please teach me!

[compubit]

Beyond what year would you not buy a phone?

I think the most affordable color 500 sets that are well made are those from 1960-64, but they have clear open center fingerwheels that are damaged easily. Luckily that part is totally visible to the buyer and seller. These phones have hard-wired (not modular) cords. Not as easy to connect to your phone line, but adapters are not that hard to find. A simple wall-mount phone jack on the end of the mounting cord will serve as a cheap adapter.

The late 1960s ones are not bad either and are still hard-wired. Into the 1970s and 80s modular phones you will find things like painted housings and cheaper plastic dials. They're still very sturdy phones. I think yours may have taken a hit sometime in the past, or someone may have replaced or removed the number ring and forgotten to put the retainer back on.

The Bell System was into refurbishing in a big way, so you often as not will see a phone like yours with mixed dates. It's not worthless--they work just as well. Originality is a plus, but it's not necessary.

If you can get the number ring to fit and a retainer ring to go on, you may have a very nice phone there. My mom has one similar to it I found at Goodwill about ten years ago for $5 that she likes a lot. In fact, she found one similar to it for my birthday.

That phone is a red 1971 (refurbished in 1974) 500 set with a 9C dial, and it's still handy, so I took some pictures of it. Pardon the dirt, but I haven't cleaned it up yet. It does have a different dial face on it, with just two small "ears" to hold it fast. Vivi, as long as you have something to catch under the retainer ring, the dial face should stay down OK.

And dial face=number ring=bezel. There are lots of names for the same part on the 500 set.

I took a picture of the retainer ring and the slot in the dial it's supposed to mate with. Then I took a shot of the retainer ring and dial face off the phone. Third shot is the slot the retainer ring goes into. There are three slots like that. They mate up with the three parts of the retainer ring. I think the ring that Kenny has may fit your dial and it's worth a try.

If you have any other questions, please feel free to ask.

Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but this one finally helped me figure out how to remove the bezel from a 67 9C dial.  I have been searching bezel removal, dial disassembly, and other topics with no luck I until finding this one. Now to clean the glue off the bezel (looks like someone put a glued down number cover over WE's standard numbers...) - it's a parts phone anyway (purchased it for the handset/coil cord to go into a headless 1500...)

Jim