Northern Electric 500 part dates puzzle

[tubaman]

I just read the post in more detail (sorry, I often just skim posts) and saw the mention of VErnon. There may be a slight chance that phone is from here in Winnipeg, Manitoba. We have a Vernon CO here, and one of the prefixes is 582 832. Just throwing that out there

Edit: 582 is Inkster exchange. Brain fart.

@CanadianGuy, I think you are right with Manitoba - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_exchange_names
There's also a Vernon in British Columbia so I (wrongly) assumed it was from there.

[CanadianGuy]

Great! Glad to help

[andre_janew]

I looked at the list of exchange names.  To 93x I would like to add Westport.  Standard Improvement Company in Kansas City, Kansas used its phone number in advertising as WEstport 1-7100. 

[tipnring]

Finding a NE 500 with matching dates on the parts is rare. You have to realize the phones companies up until the nineties rented out the phones. If the phone had a problem, the "phone guy" would come out and replace the bad part or replace the phone. The phone then went to the repair shop and was refurbished and cleaned up. As all the parts were pretty well interchangeable , you got varying dates on the phones. When you got your phone hooked up it was probably not a new phone but a phone that was refurbed to look like new. If you are lucky enough to find someone who had their original phone brand new from day one , it would have matching dates. I have only one 500 set with matching dates, a 1965 set that had been on the wall of the phone office (exchange) since 1965.

[tubaman]

@tipnring (great name by the way)

Yes, I understand how the parts got all mixed up. The GPO in this country (UK) were much the same with parts being swapped as needed.
There's still something rather special about a date matching set as it somehow feels more original.

[MMikeJBenN27]

The phone probably has been dropped on the floor, and suffered a cracked shell and cracked handset caps, so they phone man replaced those, and as for the dial, it probably was replaced during refurbishment by the phone company.  As for hard to remove ABS caps, I put Novus Plastic Polish #2 on the threads and work them back and forth, over and over until it feels easy to turn, then clean it off.  That Plastic Polish is abrasive and "grinds it into correct tolerances".  Valve-grinding paste will also work.

[tubaman]

The phone probably has been dropped on the floor, and suffered a cracked shell and cracked handset caps, so they phone man replaced those....

This has reminded me of a conversation with one of my brothers many years ago.  It was in the 1980's and he still had a rented, hard wired, phone from British Telecom (BT) - a 746 if I remember correctly. He wanted to use his own phone and stop the rental, but the only option at that time was to pay BT to convert the hard wired phone to a plug and socket first, and it was quite a lot of money.  I commented that if the phone were to break then BT would come out to fix it and the conversion would get done for free as they did not carry spares for the old phones any more.
I'm sure it was pure coincidence that the poor phone suffered a hard impact with his stone floor not long after we had the conversation....