Pay phone graveyard

[bakerbrett741]

here is an interesting article members here mite appreciate.

http://news.yahoo.com/photos/tech-grave-slideshow/

[ESalter]

The very last of the 9 photos makes me absolutely sick.  A mountain of 500s, 2500s, 554s, 2554s, Trimlines, and Princesses.

[Russ Kirk]

It looks like an old photo........

I wonder who got that pile and is selling it on eBay???

[WesternElectricBen]

Maybe the american pickers will save some of that?

[MagicMo]

It looks like an old photo........

I wonder who got that pile and is selling it on eBay???

My Dad did.
LOL
Mo

[McHeath]

Man O' Man!  Now that pile would be fun to pick through.  Easy way to spend a whole day.  It does look like an older picture, maybe it was back in the 80's when Ma Bell was broken up.

[Russ Kirk]

It does look like an older picture, maybe it was back in the 80's when Ma Bell was broken up.

That's what I was thinking,  maybe when people could buy their own phones and they turned in the their leased WE sets.

[poplar1]

It does look like an older picture, maybe it was back in the 80's when Ma Bell was broken up.

That's what I was thinking,  maybe when people could buy their own phones and they turned in the their leased WE sets.

According to Bill Wright, a few years ago there were still about 25 dial candlesticks being leased in New Orleans!

The idea to lease transmitters instead of selling them is attributed to Graham Bell's father-in-law. This practice continued for many years. At one time, there were 100 million leased sets. Even after it was "legal" to buy and connect your own phones,  you still couldn't buy any of the "Big Ten" sets--500, Princess, etc.--from the phone company. Later, they relaxed this rule and you could buy the phones you had been leasing--usually for about $20. (That's the ones you see with a "Sold By" sticker on the bottom. )  Or you could pick up some at the Phone Center stores---I don't recall if these were rebuilt or new. 

So many of them did get scrapped. According to my friend Bill, in the early 90s the WE shop "advanced line" cherry picked the best ones for rebuilding. Any 500 with a 7-type dial or suede feet got sold to ACI.

[WesternElectricBen]

Whats ACI?

[poplar1]

Applied Components Inc. They bought all the AT&T "lease junk" for 11 cents a pound. They sold us lease return rotary phones for $1.25 each and Touch-Tone for $2.00 each in the early 90s. (I have previously posted here about ACI.)

[WesternElectricBen]

Oh ok!