WE 500 Touch Tone in circular dial inset.

[bwanna]

hobie,

your phone is still pretty to look at, serves your purpose & nobody here has one like it   long as the  35$ wasn't the grocery money don't beat yourself up.

i've found that sellers on ebay donot always know of what they speak. if the pics don't clearly show all facets of the item, i don't bid. so, it's just live & learn.

[HobieSport]

Yep I bought it on a whim. Next time I'd ask more questions of the seller. But it's still a nice phone and serves it's purpose. Just not really "collectible" IMO.

[bwanna]

beauty is in the eye etc......     maybe you will start a whole new variety of collectibles

[McHeath]

Look on the bright side, in 60 years it will be very collectable. 

[Phonesrfun]

Who of most of us are going to be here in 60 years?

-Bill

[bwanna]

i always tell my son that all this VALUABLE old junk i have laying around is his inheritance! i'm sure he will be rich when he sells off the collectibles

[Phonesrfun]

Hopefully he will see the value in it.

-Bill

[McHeath]

Who of most of us are going to be here in 60 years?

Hey I'll only be 103, just think of all the stories the kiddos will want from me about what the "old days" of today were like!

Me:    "Yep, the phones were actually not implanted in yer head back then, you had to hold a big piece of plastic, or even bakelite, up next to yer ear and talk out loud into it!"

Kid:     "Gee gramps, you actually had to speak out loud?  How primitive.  What's bakerlite?"

Me:     "It's a type of stone carved out of a volcano by a tribal people called The Bell Systems, used to be a lot of around but it's real scarce nowadays."

[HobieSport]

Here (finally) are pics of the insides of the Premier 2500. Obviously a far cry from a WE 2500, but still, not all that poorly built. It's rather disturbingly lightweight though.

[McHeath]

Thanks for the pics.  Interesting.  It's recent made in China, I'd guess in the last 10 years or so, and yet it follows the Western Electric pattern pretty faithfully.  I've got a 2500 that Pacific Bell had made in 1994 in China that really cheapens things up, the hookswitch is a little plastic deal screwed to the shell, the ringer is a little single gong jobber that's no more than 2 inches around, and the network is built into the keypad instead of a separate component. 

You can buy the Premier brand of phone on the fivestarphones.com web site, but they are not like yours with the 500 shell but have the 2500 style case.  They, along with Cortelcos and Asimitels and Scitechs are all now billed as heavy duty business phones, which is amusing that what was once the standard issue residential phone is now the heavy duty corporate phone. 

[deedubya3800]

I usually refer to these as 3500 sets, though I'm not sure if that's official or not. Just like benhutcherson said, Cortelco makes the analogical 3554. Whether or not WE ever made them, I would surmise that most that exist may have started out as 500 sets that were refurbed later to be Touch Tone sets, or were built using parts that were intended for 500 sets. As Bell and WE were developing what became the 1500 and 2500, they built several prototypes that closely resembled a 10-button version of this before going with the square face. See those on Paul F's site: http://www.paul-f.com/weprotot.html#WE1500

[Jim Stettler]

From what I've gathered it was not a Western Electric phone but a Northern Electric model.  No idea of the model number, they claim at oldphones that it's a 3500, but who knows?  Look forward to seeing and learning more about it when you get it Hobie.

3500 would make sense for the model number. Cortelco currently still sells the wall phone with the round dial pad under the model number of 3554. The 2554 is the slimmed down version, which only has a gong ringer and the thin lip that the handset hangs on(as opposed to a big plastic or chrome hook).

I have heard them called 3500 sets and 3554's (wall). This was years ago.
The TT mini wall is a 2554 and the mini Rotary is a ?
I have only heard it called a mini wall dial set.
Jim

[cihensley@aol.com]

WECo did not make a rotary dial version on the 1554/2554 chassis.

Chuck

[rdelius]

I believe somebody put an old shell on a new chassis. Any markings on the shell?.Note the 1977 ringer instead of the plastic one that is usually found on those sets.Find an older WE set and move the shell.
Those 500 set clones are not bad, Real parts will fit.
Robby

[Jester]

I have heard them called 3500 sets and 3554's (wall). This was years ago.
The TT mini wall is a 2554 and the mini Rotary is a ?
I have only heard it called a mini wall dial set.
Jim

S-C referred to these as 1654.  They aren't very common in my part of the world, but I did find one locally years ago.