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Running With Scissors

Started by Dave F, October 27, 2011, 03:12:12 PM

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Dave F

All of my collecting life I had yearned for a pink 565HK keyset.  I had only seen two in pictures and never one in person.  It's a really rare phone; W.E. didn't make very many; and it was near the top of my wish-list for decades.  Then, a few years ago, a near-mint pink 565HK magically appeared on eBay.  Holy-moley!  I decided then and there that I was absolutely going to win that auction, no question about it.  I told my wife that I needed to have that phone, and she said that if it meant so much to me, I should go ahead and do whatever it took to win.  So, after thoughtfully considering the consequences for just about 30 seconds, I plunked down a bid of about $1500.00.  I figured that nobody other than a lunatic would ever risk doing anything like that, and I obviously would be the winner.  Well, as you might expect, I finally got my pink keyset.   And, probably because the auction photo and the description were both poor, none of the other heavy-hitters paid much attention to it, and the final price wasn't all that steep.  Mission accomplished.  Now, so it seemed, I had discovered a new way to win important auctions.  Just bid like an out-of-control mad man and you will always prevail.  Simple, elegant, and very nice and tidy, all except for just one teeny-weeny little gotcha:  What do you suppose the result would be if two crazy people happened upon the same auction?  Wouldn't that be fun?  Well, yesterday we got a chance to see that in action.

Yesterday on eBay (item #190590482973), a W.E. 55B type 3 speakerphone control unit sold for $510!  Admittedly, they don't come along every day, but $510 ??  Geesh!  A typical reasonable price for one of these would be somewhere in the $75 to $100 range.  I got my last one on eBay for less than $50.  It appears that two crazies just had to have one, and one of them certainly got his!  It's quite possible that the guy who came in second was the real winner of that auction.

Lesson to be learned by all (myself included) and the moral of this story: While almost every cloud has a silver lining, once in a while you might find yourself facing a mushroom cloud which most certainly does not.

rdelius

That 55B unit was missing the speaker,transmitter control and transformer wasn't it. I have extra control units if anybody is looking
Robby

Dave F

Quote from: rdelius on October 27, 2011, 06:50:53 PM
That 55B unit was missing the speaker,transmitter control and transformer wasn't it. I have extra control units if anybody is looking
Robby
Yes, the auction was just for the 55B.

cihensley@aol.com

The same thing happens when 195bdwy and nana001 both bid on BSPs. A $50 BSP suddenly sells for $800 to $1000.

Chuck

Dave F

#4
Looky here, another 55B just came on eBay within the last hour:

http://tinyurl.com/3zm2fel

Let's see what this one goes for!

GG



Good catch.

Looks like about 1968, from a) the semicircular arc of the release tab under the fingerwheel and b) the color-matching line cord. 


GG



Speaking of wild prices, go look up item 300612882626 , which just sold a few hours ago. 

Listed as "antique auto elec co telephone desk model pat # 597062 rare phone art deco"

What it actually is, is the Kellogg phone that pre-dated the "ashtray" phone but had roughly a similar form-factor, and this one had an AE Mercedes dial added with an adaptor. 

I was guessing it would go for about $180.  Not even close.  $610.  Yeeks!

The seller's description was IMHO a forgivable innocent error since those dials had "Automatic Electric Company" stamped on the fingerwheels.  And anyone who bid on this one would have been around the scene long enough to recognize the obvious Kellogg handset. 

All in all it's a nice phone, but I wonder what y'all think of that $610 selling price?

At the other end of the spectrum, someone just got a nice AE 183 SpaceSaver in jade green for $41.00 that I would have guessed twice the price for. 


Dave F

Quote from: GG on October 27, 2011, 11:59:07 PM


Good catch.

Looks like about 1968, from a) the semicircular arc of the release tab under the fingerwheel and b) the color-matching line cord. 


Pretty close.  It's dated 6-65.  Since the original picture was taken, I've added a little levity to the dial center.  Here's what it looks like now.

GG



Ha, that's funny.  Of course it begs the question of how you would have gotten your hands on printed matter from there, but as the ad says, "what goes on in Nevada stays in Nevada," so perhaps we'll never know!:-)

(For our foreign readers, keyword search the name of the company; adults only please!)

1965 and in that condition: excellent.  One would have expected fading and so on.  One could also make jokes about pre-Autovon "red phones" in the Pentagon in the era of early 1960s pastel office colors.  "Sir, that's not pink, it's Light Red.  And your other phone there isn't gray, it's Light Black."