Yard-Garage Sale Finds

[Dan]

Sure it is easy to buy one on ebay and just the shipping is a killer for realizing a super deal. I found this at the bottom of a box . I was going to give her a dollar, but she insisted 50 cents sounded right to her.

This will be a great candidate to peroxide .

http://tinyurl.com/dg2wxk

http://tinyurl.com/cfzxpd

Post your finds here and we'll decide a champion!

[Ellen]

I stopped at 2 garage sales today - one at a repairs-only service station , with a lot of tires, hubcaps and tools.  I looked in the industrial-sized staple boxes, but they were regular heavy-duty staples.  But I was thinking of us-all, and sending everyone just one strip of phone-wire staples.  Wouldn't that have been nice?  But there was no phone-stuff on my paths today.

[McHeath]

Great find for a yard sale!  I look and look here and never see any kind of phone other than modern cordless junkers.  Not sure why, but we seem to have no old phones in the yard sale pipeline. 

Phone staples, never see those either. 

[Sargeguy]

$.50???  a bargain at twice the price!!!

[Dan]

She cleaned up nicely (no peroxide, just the dishwasher and  a good waxing), picked up a 69 cent transformer from goodwill (the kind you charge a cordless phone with--make sure they push 6 watts or so-- here you have it--my $1.19 lighted princess. The bell ringer was silenced and I had to have the grey wire (or black) moved from G to L1, of course!


http://tinyurl.com/d77tjk      cleaned up

http://tinyurl.com/cl234l        lighted

[BDM]

Nice work Dan

[HobieSport]

Really nice Dan, and I like the pic of her all lit up.  50 cents.  Amazing!

[Dennis Markham]

Very nice Dan!  You have resurrected the past and once again made it a great telephone.  They don't make them like that today.  Under $2.00.  That is amazing!!

[Dan]

 Thanks for the compliments guys! I am really liking these princess phones. I found a dark blue @ a flea market for $15 (not lighted, newer) . My wife likes it because it is a touchtone, I just like it because it may be as close to a Mediterranean Blue WE product as I may get.

I don't know about you guys, but the thing I like most about this hobby is resurrecting these old filthy neglected phones and restoring them to their former glory. I actually ENJOY pulling off the dial off a 500 and taking the crusty dial ring off, knowing it hasn't been touched in 4 decades or so.

[AET]

I don't know about you guys, but the thing I like most about this hobby is resurrecting these old filthy neglected phones and restoring them to their former glory. I actually ENJOY pulling off the dial off a 500 and taking the crusty dial ring off, knowing it hasn't been touched in 4 decades or so.

Sometimes my hands are shaking on older phones, with the anticipation that there may be an older dial card under the newer one, but sadly haven't had this joy yet.  I was really hoping with my old telephone from our pharmacy building where the number had been 19 to find one, I was highly disappointed.  But that's all part of the hobby.

[Dan]

I know how you feel about this. My favorites are the soft centered colored dials with the phone # 's stuck on top of the celluloid cover. I have actually found THREE old ones underneath once! One was a regular area code and #, under it was a BEachwood 4-5789, and lastly a 4-5789 black one under that!

[HobieSport]

...the thing I like most about this hobby is resurrecting these old filthy neglected phones and restoring them to their former glory.

Exactly!  And I love opening them up for the first time and finding all the dates (darn I wish AE had dates on their older phones) and then thinking back in history about what was going on in the world during those times.

And then there are the fun little surprises inside, like finding that a 302 is really a 306 with the vacuum tube.  But I think maybe the most humorous surprise award found in a Princess phone belongs to JimH:

I bought a Princess ten-button (okay, pink, guys get your jabs overwith)  and when I opened up the earpiece and removed the receiver capsule, there were condoms in there!  The expiration date on them was 1979!  I could just imagine some young girl hiding them in there so her momma wouldn't find them.  And then she had her little boyfriend over when the parents weren't home.  Funny what you find.  I call it my condom phone.  Of course, after cleaning and polishing it, I couldn't remove the condoms.  They went right back in there.  So many phones have interesting stories!

[AET]

I know how you feel about this. My favorites are the soft centered colored dials with the phone # 's stuck on top of the celluloid cover. I have actually found THREE old ones underneath once! One was a regular area code and #, under it was a BEachwood 4-5789, and lastly a 4-5789 black one under that!

Is that really the number?  Because Beechwood 4-5789 is a song by the Marvelettes!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naJvr59DJLQ

[Dan]

No that's not my #, I was using it as an example--I see your knowledge of music trivia is great for such a young dude!

[Dennis Markham]

That was a good pick up Tom.  I read it and it didn't even register in my brain.  And I'm familiar with that tune.