Look what I just lucked into!

[Adam]

I just snagged this Western Electric 500 A/B dated 9/50 from Etsy for $29.00!

This will be, by far, the oldest phone in my collection!

[HarrySmith]

Nice one!
I am jealous!

[Kenny C]

Looks like these 1950 sets come in pairs.  . Looks like the dial bezel was replaced with a later along with the cord. Sure hope all the rest is 1950. Beautiful set.

[Dennis Markham]

Nice pick up, Dave.  I look forward to seeing "under the hood".

[Kenny C]

Bet that is a soft plastic housing because you can see parts of a yellow date stamp on the front edge.

[Dennis Markham]

Very good observation, Kenny.

[paul-f]

Great find!

The dial plate looks like the early dual injection molded version.

The separate A/B stamping on the bottom suggests a trip through the refurb shop.  It will be interesting to see what, if anything was changed.

[Dan]

Hey Paul I thought the early plates had "operator" in much smaller font. I thought it was a replacement, like Kenny C's was.

[GG]

Who or what is Etsy?

[Tom B]

Good one , Dave. Like everyone else I want to see some pics of the insides

[paul-f]

Hey Paul I thought the early plates had "operator" in much smaller font. I thought it was a replacement, like Kenny C's was.

Dan,

There are at least three styles of early number plates for 7 dials.

1. made from clear plastic and back-painted.
2. double injection molded with small lettering.
3. double injection molded with slightly larger lettering.

I believe the one in the photo is number 2.

I suspect that when they went to DIM they kept the letter size about the same as the number 1 plate.  Experience quickly taught them that there were manufacturing inconsistencies that were visible with the small lettering, so the fix was to make the letters and numbers a bit larger.

Check out the discussion and photos of the 500T on this thread:
   http://www.classicrotaryphones.com/forum/index.php?topic=4463.0

[Dan]

Thanks paul, it never ceases to amaze me how much you know and what new things I can learn on this forum.

[paul-f]

You're welcome, Dan.

BTW, I don't really know all this stuff.  However, I do have a fairly good filing system and hosting the web site gave me a few years head start collecting info on this subject.

[Greg G.]

What does the A/B signify?

[paul-f]

What does the A/B signify?

http://www.classicrotaryphones.com/forum/index.php?topic=2638.msg36296#msg36296