Gearing up For Easter...

[McHeath]

Wow!  That's a sweet lime green 2500!  New with the box, bet it will go for a lot.  Why exactly nothing like this is hiding in my attic I'll never know.

[AET]

There was an old 2500 today at the factory where my ma works.  I said to my dad "Look, that's an early touch-tone!"  My dad just shook his head and said "You and your phones"

[McHeath]

Ah yes, I too know what it's like to have people shake their heads a bit at my Old Phone Hobby™.  It's interesting in that as humans collect everything under the sun, phones don't seem to be on most peoples radar screen as a collectable item.  I get a lot of "Huh?" looks and puzzled expressions, so much the better really as this keeps the prices down.  Look at what happened with old cars when they went from yesterdays news to hot items to collect.  I only paid 400 bucks for my 1960 Bel Air, and it was in good shape and ran well, and that was because it was seen then as an old car that was outdated and no one wanted.  I'm guessing that not too far in the future old phones will start to catch on as collectable and the prices will then go up to silly levels and we will look back on today as the good ol' days when phones were cheap.

[HobieSport]

Speaking of the hobbies of collecting cars, model trains, telephones, or whatever, here is a fun Peanuts cartoon from Gary Goffs website showing the perfect solution to when folks make fun of our phone hobby.  When in doubt...YANK!

[Dan/Panther]

Ah yes, I too know what it's like to have people shake their heads a bit at my Old Phone Hobby™.  It's interesting in that as humans collect everything under the sun, phones don't seem to be on most peoples radar screen as a collectable item.  I get a lot of "Huh?" looks and puzzled expressions, so much the better really as this keeps the prices down.  Look at what happened with old cars when they went from yesterdays news to hot items to collect.  I only paid 400 bucks for my 1960 Bel Air, and it was in good shape and ran well, and that was because it was seen then as an old car that was outdated and no one wanted.  I'm guessing that not too far in the future old phones will start to catch on as collectable and the prices will then go up to silly levels and we will look back on today as the good ol' days when phones were cheap.

I know this is a bit off topic, but I had just finished posting a response in ARF's site, when The firsat post in Phone forum was this thread about collecting.
My first car was a 58 Chevy Impala, 348 tri-power with a trouble glide.
I paid, or rather my Dad paid $250.00 for it. I drove it for about a year, then one night while at the drive-in, I noticed the hood starting to turn dark in the center. The engine had caught fire, I drove the thing home about 20 miles, ( Knocking you wouldn't believe ) parked it in the driveway, and that was that.
My next car was a 57 Chevy Bel-Air 2 door hardtop. Perhaps the only car I really wish I still had. I have the original sales receipt for it, $725.00 out the door, in excellent condition. I drove that for about 3 years and ended up putting in a 389 Pontiac, with 4 speed hydromatic. It never ran like I thought it would. I didn't know much about rear-end ratios then. I paid $50.00 fore the 59 Bonneville I got the motor out of. It had been rearended and not worth fixing, but driveable. It had everything automatic, except like they used to say; "an automatic butt wiper".

D/P

[bingster]

Black 1959 Buick Electra for me.  In 1984, sitting for sale in somebody's front yard, $1300 with 35,000 original miles (every yearly inspection receipt was in the glove box proving the mileage).  I still miss that car.  I guess you always miss the first one.

[Dan/Panther]

Black 1959 Buick Electra for me.  In 1984, sitting for sale in somebody's front yard, $1300 with 35,000 original miles (every yearly inspection receipt was in the glove box proving the mileage).  I still miss that car.  I guess you always miss the first one.

Yeah! I still think about Her once in awhile.
D/P

[Ellen]

My first "car" was a 1970 Ford F150 with farm plates.  $500  Boy, did I look cool in that one!

The next was a 1966 Chevelle with big holes all over, but a great engine.  $100

Then a red VW microbus. $1200

Then we got the baby and needed something that actually went.  New Ford Escort $7000 +/-

Now we have old Volvos.

[Dan]

Hi Ellen, it it a coincidence you had the baby shortly after you got the microbus

[HobieSport]

D/P;  You had a '57 Bel-Air two door hardtop in good shape and you sold it
I'm sorry to do this, but we're just going to have to sic Atomic Toms' Dad on you.

Ellen, heck, I was almost BORN in a '56 VW BUG, and my first "car" was also a Ford truck.

[Dan/Panther]

D/P;  You had a '57 Bel-Air two door hardtop in good shape and you sold it
I'm sorry to do this, but we're just going to have to sic Atomic Toms' Dad on you.

Ellen, heck, I was almost BORN in a '56 VW BUG, and my first "car" was also a Ford truck.

Matt;
No, It was 1969, I traded it for a refrigerator....and a 1963 Sunbeam Alpine.
You could buy 55, 56 and 57 Chevys all day long for $500.00- $1000.00.
By that time, I had just bought my first new car, a 1969 Toyota Carolla, for a total price of, out the door......... $1695.00, the next year I bought a Toyota Hi-Lux  pickup, Brand new, out the door for $2495.00.
Then the next year I really went out on a limb and bought a '68' Pontiac Firebird, 3 years old for $4400.00. That was a years salary.

D/P

[McHeath]

Yeah it was funny eh, you could buy the "classic" cars of today for a song and nobody wanted them.  They were just old cars, and who in the H-E-Doubletoothpicks wanted an old car? 

Who wanted anything old?  Back in the day old stuff was for throwing away. 

[AET]

McHeath, you had a 60 Bel-Air?  That was my first car, bought it on 06 (when I turned 16) for 2500 bucks, she's in a junk yard somewhere now. 

And Dan,  You had higher-end models of cars both my dad and I have.  My dad's got that 57 Chevy that Hobie was talking about.  And my project is a 58 Chevy.  (Dad's is a middle-of-the-road 210 and mine's a base-model Delray)  I'd love to have both.  And them 348 with the tri-powers are big bucks these days!  And I do agree with you on that famous nickname for the TurboGlide of TroubleGlide, they were junk.  The PowerGlide's weren't much better my Bel-Air had one and it was junk and my buddy's 68 Chevy C-30 has one and it's junk.

[Dennis Markham]

$2,500 bucks when I was 16 was a distant dream!  I was working midnights on the weekends at an all night restaurant for the whopping sum of $1.51 an hour!  You do the math!  But $2,500 got one a lot more in 1971 than it does now.  My first car was a 3 year old 1969 Ford Falcon Futura with a 302.  It was a 4 door grandpa's car I bought from a friend of my father's for $1,500.  It wasn't "cool" but it was pretty fast.  Didn't take me long to tear it up.

[Ellen]

Let's see, the chronology of the VW and the baby.  Oh, too long ago.  The baby was started in Medusa, New York, on a vacation.  In a house.  She, the one of the green hair (and purple, and silver, and blue) thinks this (Medusa) is fabulous.  At 9 mo. pregnant, I was changing the engine in the VW for the second time, but I needed help.   Then, after a few late-night trips into the mountains with the baby and the dog and the tool kits (forestry and carpentry and VW) and the camping gear, and the flat tires and blown engines, we gave up and bought the new Ford.