Recent Find: 1959 Western Electric 500

[LM Ericsson]

I went to a Antique Store up in Manassas Virginia and saw this phone there. I looked on the bottom and saw the date 10-59. I absolutely fell in love with it and just had to buy it. I ended up spenting $31.00 on it. It did not have a number card so I found one laying around and decided to put it in.

[Dennis Markham]

Welcome to the Forum!  The white 500 looks very nice.  As you know very often the white ones have discolored from so many years of exposure to UV light.  Yours looks very nice.  Did you find a date on the housing?  More than likely it's ABS (hard plastic)?  Very nice phone and the price was reasonable too, especially considering you didn't have to pay to have it shipped to you---which of course avoids the opportunity to have it get broken.

[LM Ericsson]

There is no date in the housing but it has the weird smell inside possibly from hard plastic.

[Dennis Markham]

If the housing is NOT stamped in what looks like ink (paint) along the inside front edge, look for a small circle with a letter over a number.  Like C/59 or 6/60.  That would be molded into the plastic.  That will be the year it was made.  The "cheesy" odor people talk about is from the earlier Tenite or so-called "soft plastic".

[LM Ericsson]

pardon me i meant soft plastic

[LM Ericsson]

yes there is it says C 66

[Dennis Markham]

Well it's in remarkable white condition for being 40 years old.  Nice find.

[LM Ericsson]

Thanks

[jsowers]

You have a very nice white 500. Technically it's not from 1959 if it has parts dated from all over the place, but it does look exactly like a 1959 500 since they kept the open center fingerhweel on it. The Bell System was into recycling long before the phrase "environmentally correct" came into use. Note the dates on all the pieces of your phone and usually the latest dates will tell if it was refurbished, and when. They even dated the handset caps, handset and cords.

Normally they replaced the plastics and the cords and re-used the inside components from older phones that were returned. I can see from your pictures that the ringer is 11-56 and the dial may be from the same month and year as the phone, but was originally from an aqua blue phone. It says 7C-62 and -62 means aqua blue. White would be -58.

Here is the list of WE color codes for figuring that out, from Paul Fassbender's site. The usual 500 set colors from when they stamped the color code on the dial are -3 (black) and -50 (ivory) through -64 (turquoise).

http://www.paul-f.com/wecolors.htm

Welcome to the Forum! Since you got this in Manassas and that card is area code 703, I'm assuming you're from Virginia. I'm south of you in NC (originally 704). Enjoy your white 500, and be forewarned... they have a way of multiplying.

[bingster]

I need to head over to Manassas.  All the phone's I've run across in Alexandria are modular junk for $100.

[LM Ericsson]

When I was at the antique store I saw a pink 500 with the open center fingerwheel thea was dated from 1958. There was a multi line 500 in avacado green that was pushbutton too.

[Kenny C]

How much was the 58 pink?

[LM Ericsson]

About 34 dollars 95. I went to that antique store two times. The first time I saw it it cost about $60.00. Same thing with my white 500. It was about 60 dollars too but the price went down the next time I went there, so I decided to snatch it up before someone else did.

[Kenny C]

If it is soft plastic 34.95 is a steal!!!!

[LM Ericsson]

The only downside to it is that it had a crack in it. I never buy phones with cracks in it. Oh and I must tell you, at the same place, they had a 302 telephone that was about oh.....20 dollars. It had a huge crack all the way up from the corner to the top where the handset goes. I looked at the handset and what I saw was that the reciever caps and capsules were missing. It made me sad to see that phone in such poor condition. But the dial was in quite good condition!