found a nice NE 500 today

[sidrj]

Found this Northern Electric 500 today at a garage sale for $5
It is mint and works perfectly.
numbers on the bottom read ne500 30 c/d Made in Canada

[gpo706]

Thats an absolute steal at 5 bucks, nice one.

[Willytx]

That is a deal!

I saw a battered 1970s WE500 at a local junk shop here for 39.99.

[Adam]

Very nice!  I am currently enamored with Northern Electric/Northern Telecom 500 style sets, because, besides the lack of "OPERATOR" on the dial for the sets made for Canadian domestic use, they also have 6 hole receiver caps (and no center hole in the transmitter caps).

It seems NE/NT never added the center holes, or if they did, they added them at a very late point.  I own 4 NE/NT phones, an NE black 500, an NT Logic 5 keyset, an NT Logic 1 single line set, and an NT 6-button phone.  They all have 6 hole receiver caps, and only my 6 button phone has a center hole on the transmitter cap, all the other three do not.

Besides the lack of the word "OPERATOR" on the dials, 5 and 7-type NE/NT rotary dials also had a different, "less bold" font for the letters.  In other words, whereas on a WE dial, the letters and numbers look the same, on a NE/NT dial, the numbers are bolder than the letters (as you can see in the pic of sidrj's phone).

All these things make the NE/NT 500 style phones unique and fun for collecting!


Edit: Um... I meant to type Logic 6, not Logic 5...

[sidrj]

there was a lot of great information on your post it was very informative.
Thanks for replying