Western Electric Model GN4676 Desk Phone with Built-in Subset

[Doug Rose]

This is one my DREAM phones. I had always seen pictures of these with a thermoplastic base and the rumor was they cracked under the weight of the metal 202. Check this out with a metal (brass?) base. Such a cool phone....Doug


http://tinyurl.com/leln4wf

[baldopeacock]

I didn't realize these were produced so late - 1955 per the vermillion date stamps on this one plus Celnout's ad copy.    I had assumed this was much earlier.   Would have been hard for this to compete with the new, sleek 500 in the marketplace.

They are cool, though.

[Phonesrfun]

We had 2 of these - metal bases- that showed up at the Seattle phone show two years ago one red and one green.  There is one in the Seattle museum, and last year, yet another one of our show participants brought one in that he bought on the way to the show!


We discussed the red and green phones here on the forum.  Ma Bell was going to great lengths to repurpose old phones in order to take the pressure off the demand for 500's.  This model has some serious design issues (heavy, bulky, not so sleek) so it is no wonder there are so few of them around.  For the collector that has one, that is a good thing.

[paul-f]

A quick search for GN4676 produces several good forum topics.

There's some date info here:
  http://www.classicrotaryphones.com/forum/index.php?topic=4593.msg58723#msg58723