Defining Your Collection

[Doug Rose]

I have been collecting a long time. Long before the Internet. No eBay back then. You learned from an old timer, sometimes the
knowledge was real.....sometimes... not so real.

Flea markets, yard sales, antiques or thrift stores, that was it  for finding phones.

So how many Black 302s do you need? It is a good question.

The old timer I learned from sold at a Flea Market, Old NET
Repairman who collected as well. I was always buying from him, in fact buying any phone I could afford. I had a $20 limit per
phone, back then you could always find phones at Fleas, usually under $5. $20 would buy a lot of phones. Plus, I was poor.
His girlfriend sold Avon Products in the next booth.  Hmmmm.

Some of the phones I passed up. Well, I was a novice and did learn from my many mistakes.

This old timer told me, "when you really get serious about collecting, you will sell telephones." I thought he was crazy,
sell telephones....no way.

It finally sunk in, keep the "good ones" for yourself and sell the rest to pay for the "good ones" you keep. I have been
doing this for well over 35 years and it has subsidized my collection.

Decide what you want to collect, ALL OF THEM is really hard, unless you have a large space to display. I decided on the Color
302s back to the Sticks and woodies. I grew up with 500 sets, so they are not antiques to me. Although the Forum has taught
me a lot about soft plastics and their value. I got a Blue and a Red soft plastic 500 set and sold them. They just didn't do
it for me.

I now buy phones to clean up and resell to pay for the few  "good ones" I now find. The larger your collection becomes, the
narrower you scope is. That being said, there is always the next "gotta have" phone on my list. Kellogg 9900 w/ Dial is #1
with a bullet.

Look at your collection as you are showing it off to a non-collector. If you have a row of Red 500 sets with minor
differences lined up next to each other, one after the other you will get the inevitable, why do you have so many of the same
phone. You see the grey curly, grey straight, red straight; they do not.

I have been in the industry all my life, so I collect tools of the trade.  Being from Boston, I love the NET stuff. Love the
signs as well, porcelain or glass.

Bottom line, please yourself it's your collection....Doug

[WEBellSystemChristian]

Great thoughts, Doug!!

I know I will have to start selling some of my phones; about 200 phones later, and I've only sold three, all of them went to family friends.

I think that I just can't stand seeing a phone that I have all cleaned up sink into a USPS box, ready to be shipped to a new owner somewhere hundreds of miles away. That will change, though...

[dsk]

We all have our stories, I'm not a real collector, I have no system of what to have, how to store, and how to show my phones.  I'm a hobby fettler, no connections to the industry, just a genuine interest of knowing how it works, get things working.... It is no market for selling the phones after restoring them, due to shipping costs. But it is fun, and I have some.  I would probably just like to get them working for people, and send them away again, but again, shipping kills most of those too.  Once I got a phone from Germany fixed it and sent it back. Gives a good feeling, even better than the one of having something nobody else have.  Collector? not really, but what am I?

And I love this forum.  Especially when I may guide someone to a repair-job.  I also have to thank lots of you helping me. =)

dsk

[compubit]

Good points.  When I restarted collecting, it was buying everything, especially cheap. Now I've found my niche (the white Western Electric standards, Trimline desk and Princess phones in each color). I'm down to the rarer colors and cleaning up the set of white and finding the minor variations...  Now it's time to sell some of the extras I picked up along the way, after I finish cleaning them up.

Jim

[podor]

I collected phones as a kid. My parents loved garage sales, estate sales and flee markets, so it was pretty easy to grab a nice phone with my allowance here and there. Once I got into cars, phones started to fade away. I just jumped back into it about a year ago after my daughter asked if there were phones when I was a kid. I pulled a few out of storage and hooked them up together. Long story short, I now have a fully functional Panasonic PBX running throughout the house and a 551b KSU running my office.

Most of my collection is WE 1A2 stuff. It's quite a modest collection, about 35 phones total between what I had and what I purchased recently.  In addition to the 1A2 stuff, have a few 500s, a nice yellow 2500, a few princess phones and a few trimlines. I don't plan on adding much more. I really enjoy fixing the phones and making things work together. Things like gathering everything I needed for the KSU to work, reading BSPs or wiring the PBX so the wife doesn't see wires all over is what I enjoy. Basically, taking other people's junk and making it live on as it was intended.

I have learned a ton from this forum and Sundance. Thanks for all the advice and knowledge.

[Dennis Markham]

Look at your collection as you are showing it off to a non-collector. If you have a row of Red 500 sets with minor
differences lined up next to each other, one after the other you will get the inevitable, why do you have so many of the same
phone. You see the grey curly, grey straight, red straight; they do not.

Bottom line, please yourself it's your collection....Doug

Very well put, Doug (about collecting what one wants).   I think it was Rick Nelson that said "......you can't please everyone, so you have to please yourself....".

An example of what you described exactly is this post I made a while ago.  Look at my reply #88 in this thread.  Scroll down to the photos:

http://www.classicrotaryphones.com/forum/index.php?topic=2265.75

Dennis

[Doug Rose]

Fabphones said when she decided to pass on the Navy AE40...(by the way.... THANK YOU!) she only collected certain colors or types. I know some collect only Westerns....or AEs.

I was going to write a piece on Defining your collection. Memory is not always my strong suit, I already did in 2015.

Only difference is I got My Kellogg 9900, now a North Space Saver with a dial is #1 with a bullet.....Doug