I bought this Manual 302 on eBay a few days ago. Base is dated 9/41 throughout, the handset elements are 5/41. I have never seen an F1 with no markings under the grip. It hasn't been sanded down, just nothing there. I thought I had seen everything. Its filthy but in working condition.
I showed Janet the box when it arrived and asked her what she thought about the condition of the phone inside. I shook the box the phone rattled around. Handset is tough as the middle was sticking right out of the top of the box laying across the face of the phone, nothing in between. One sheet of paper around the side. Worst packing I have ever seen, but this is built like a tank. Seller stated it was brown and not metal. Well, he can't pack either....Doug
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=140520370880&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT
( dead link 06-22-21 )
Interesting, Doug. I've never seen a naked F1 before either.
The way it looks in the eBay listing looks blue to me. Probably taken under fluorescent lighting with no color correction in the camera. Still, a good price.
Dennis...I never seen one not marked F1. No Western Electric, no Bell System. Its very different, Heavy and solid.
Hopefully Paul F will let us know what I found. $14 for a working 70 year old phone with good cloth cords was a deal...Doug
I can make out the vague outline of a rectangle on the handset handle.
It's possible that the handset was buffed at some point in its history, removing the Bell & WE logos but leaving some of the rectangular outline.
Quote from: GG on March 12, 2011, 07:39:37 PM
I can make out the vague outline of a rectangle on the handset handle.
It's possible that the handset was buffed at some point in its history, removing the Bell & WE logos but leaving some of the rectangular outline.
It's possible that it may have been buffed but one would have to use some pretty abrasive compounds to get it down this far. More likely, it was a miss-stamp that got through the WE QC inspectors. Something akin to the double strike or off-center struck coin that the mint doesn't catch.
Of course I don't know about this particular handset but I have seen others, usually F1's of color that had their logos ground away. This would have been in the day when the phones belonged to the phone company. A collector friend of mine has at least one and believed the logo had been intentionally ground out to eliminate the ownership question. Perhaps more conjecture.
I have an E1 handset, and the Western Electric stamp has been rubbed out. I was told that anytime a WE handset was used by a phone company not affiliated with WE, that they were required to rub out the WE name.
Could it have been surplus Bell System stock? Western Electric marked the non-Bell System F-1s with a "W". I suspect that there was a Bell System logo that had to be removed for whatever reason.
Definitely not rubbed out, this is just flithy. There is nothing there, straight as an arrow. No crevices at all.....Doug
So you were the one who outbid me :D
I saw that and thought why not, I do not have a manual 302 and the price was good but I missed the end. Good Score and an interesting handset.
Quote from: HarrySmith on March 12, 2011, 10:29:58 PM
So you were the one who outbid me :D
I saw that and thought why not, I do not have a manual 302 and the price was good but I missed the end. Good Score and an interesting handset.
Harry....I am a bottom feeder, it was metal, even though the seller said it wasn't and the price was right. I was pleasantly surprised the dates matched. Happier with the handset. $23 for a 70 year old phone is what a bottom feeder thrives on....take care......Doug
Matching dates and metal too! What a deal!
If you are a bottom feeder than I am a below ground feeder! I put in first bid on every 99 cent phone thats gets put up! I own a few 99 cent 500's as a result!
I have two handsets like yours. One brown and one black. I was told that they were Northern Electric and made for "non subscriber use". such as military or large institutions that did not connect to the outside world. No way to verify that , but the person that gave me that information always seemed to be correct.
Andy K1WI
Quote from: K1WI on March 13, 2011, 05:42:04 PM
I have two handsets like yours. One brown and one black. I was told that they were Northern Electric and made for "non subscriber use". such as military or large institutions that did not connect to the outside world. No way to verify that , but the person that gave me that information always seemed to be correct.
Andy K1WI
Hey Andy....looks just like mine. My set is what I feel is an untouched Western, but who knows. Glad to see there is another out there, I wasn't buying the grind down theory on this...many thanks....Doug
Doug.
The brown "unlabeled" F1 came with a a 302 that was actually gold plated. It wasin use at the office of the director of a very large what at the time was reffered to as a sanitarium . Today we would call it a mental hospital. Closed sometime in the late 1970s. (This was in the US (NewYork State) Not quite sure why Northern was the supplier.
The handset definately was not ground down or sanded.
Andy (K1WI)
Quote from: wds on March 12, 2011, 08:09:58 PM
I have an E1 handset, and the Western Electric stamp has been rubbed out. I was told that anytime a WE handset was used by a phone company not affiliated with WE, that they were required to rub out the WE name.
F1Ws had the WE name and they were intended to be sold outside the Bell System.
However, anything marked
"Bell System" had to have that removed when sold outside the system.
To create a handle without any markings, WE would have to:
- fill in the part of the die where the legend was with a blank plate (which would usually leave a visible rectangular box to grind down and refinish),
- create a seperate die without the markings (which would cost big bucks) or
- grind the surface down on production handsets to remove the marking.
Now I remember who told me that..........
Here's a picture of my E1 with the rubbed out name. You can still see the W
The one Andy has and the one that I have do not looked like anything was rubbed or ground out. Looks like it was never there. Mine is smooth from cap to cap and I cannot feel any indentation. I will clean mine up and post pictures....Doug
Here is the handset cleaned up. Really no look or feel of an indent. Its A Western Electric Bell System F1 but has NONE of the markings.....Doug
I looked at my F1's, and the area around the inscription is actually raised up a little bit. Your second to last picture looks like the area of the inscription is actually artificially flat looking. I suppose it could have been cast that way, or my guess if the picture is accurate, is that the inscription was rubbed out. As the area around the inscription and the inscription on my phones is raised, then rubbing them out would render the handle smooth once rubbed out. The inscription on the E1 is recessed and a little harder to hide when rubbed out.
Are yours raised up a bit, or do they have grooves worn in them from sitting on the cradle? Mine (the ones that are on 302s) have slight grooves worn in at each end of the embossing, which give the impression that the center is raised. Why soft plastic can wear into bakelite is anybody's guess.
I have the cradle wear on a couple of my F1's, and no wear on a couple others. The E1 handle is almost flat where the lettering is embossed into the handle. The F1 is thicker in the area of the embossing. If you put a straight edge on the F1, you can see how much it's raised up in the center, where the embossing is. When you sand the embossing off, the handle still looks natural, but with the E1, it's very evident that embossing has been removed. Try putting a straight edge on the F1 that has no embossing and compare it to a normal F1. I don't have a F1 with the embossing removed so I can't compare the differences. K1WI's handset looks like it was cast without the embossing, but Doug's handset looks like it was rubbed out, (picture f15.jpg) and the handle seems flattened out in the area of the embossing. But, it could just be the picture. Very interesting discussing about the embossing, or lack thereof.
Quote from: wds on March 19, 2011, 08:19:10 PM
I have the cradle wear on a couple of my F1's, and no wear on a couple others. The E1 handle is almost flat where the lettering is embossed into the handle. The F1 is thicker in the area of the embossing. If you put a straight edge on the F1, you can see how much it's raised up in the center, where the embossing is. When you sand the embossing off, the handle still looks natural, but with the E1, it's very evident that embossing has been removed. Try putting a straight edge on the F1 that has no embossing and compare it to a normal F1. I don't have a F1 with the embossing removed so I can't compare the differences. K1WI's handset looks like it was cast without the embossing, but Doug's handset looks like it was rubbed out, and the handle seems flattened out in the area of the embossing. But, it could just be the picture. Very interesting discussing about the embossing, or lack thereof.
Dave....I have seen them rubbed out before and there is always a telltale mark. This is clean and straight and I can't see how this looks rubbed out. To me this would be an awful lot of trouble to make something look this good to get Western Electric or Bell System off of it....Just my opinion....thanks....Doug
How'bout this: Refurbishing outfits that used highspeed buffing wheels? Highspeed buffing using the right buffing compounds, will take off just about anything and produce a smooth (though not quite flat) surface.
So they score a bunch of WE material as surplus, and have a client that wants anonymized handsets that'll look new, as input to that client's manufacturing process to produce something new to sell under their own name, or something like that. Presto!, brand new F1 handsets with no name.
BTW, when I was a kid we referred to similar methods as "de-monopolizing." As in, "That one has BSP/NFS (Bell System Property, Nor For Sale) all over it, it needs to be de-monopolized."
Quote from: GG on March 26, 2011, 11:57:03 PM
How'bout this: Refurbishing outfits that used highspeed buffing wheels? Highspeed buffing using the right buffing compounds, will take off just about anything and produce a smooth (though not quite flat) surface.
So they score a bunch of WE material as surplus, and have a client that wants anonymized handsets that'll look new, as input to that client's manufacturing process to produce something new to sell under their own name, or something like that. Presto!, brand new F1 handsets with no name.
BTW, when I was a kid we referred to similar methods as "de-monopolizing." As in, "That one has BSP/NFS (Bell System Property, Nor For Sale) all over it, it needs to be de-monopolized."
"take off just about anything and produce a smooth (though not quite flat) surface."
GG...does the surface looks flat to you on mine? I cannot feel any indents. Do you think this was buffed away?....Kidphone
Hard to tell from the photos. The only way I could be sure is to look at it up close in person and feel the surface.