Nice Western Electric Ivory 354 - Just Listed

[Dennis Markham]

I saw this tonight and thought I'd mention it.  It looks like a nice ivory phone.  The cord appears to be an original cloth cord, but stretched. 

http://tinyurl.com/6ft8xr ( dead link 02-27-22 )

[McHeath]

Is that ivory handset made of bakelite?

[bingster]

It's the same ivory thermoplastic as the phone's case.  They're hollow and very light in weight.  You can always tell the painted black from the thermoplastic because there's a rectangular insert on the underside of the handset, where your fingers grip, and there's always dirt in the crack around the rectangle.

[Dan/Panther]

Is the plastic dial original ?
Looks like 302 style mechanism is that right.

D/P

[benhutcherson]

Yes, as far as I know, all original colored 300-series phones(including the 302 and 354) had the plastic fingerwheel. I believe that it was also used on all of the D-1 mount "Imperial" telephones. If you see one that has a painted metal fingerwheel, more than likely the whole telephone is painted.

I've only ever seen the plastic fingerwheel attached to a type 6J dial. There may, of course, have been others.

[Dan/Panther]

Now I'm confused, I understood that clear finger wheels, didn't appear until the Princess models , yet I have several 500's dated in the mid 50's, that have clear plastic dials, and now I find out that late model 300 series phones had clear plastic dials, these I assume to be original phones and not updates.
Would someone please post a list of what phones FIRST used clear finger wheels on the ORIGINAL phones?

D/P

[bingster]

The 302 was first with the plastic fingerwheels.  They appeared before the war, even.

[benhutcherson]

As far as I know, colored 500 sets had a plastic fingerwheel from day one. The only exception to this would be the extraordinarily rare, very early two-color 500 sets(colored shell with black handset and dial) which Dennis has a nice write-up about on his blog.

[Dan]

How hard would it be to make those fake "Tuxedo " two color phones? I know of one at a thrift store thats black (metal dial) and beige.

On a side note, I made a frankenstein two color WE 500 for my son by combining a yellow and black phone and printing the Pittsburgh Steelers Logo for him and applying it to the finger wheel. It looks great and is cool to see my teenager wok a rotary phone.

[McHeath]

I guess it would be pretty easy to fake those two tone phones of the 50's, if you got the dated parts and colors no one would be the wiser I suppose.  They don't do much for me, I like the monochromatic WE colors, but I'm sure many folks like them.  I do like the old AE's and 302 WE's with chrome on them.