Is this vintage dependent, as far as color designation on the dial ?
Look at the photo and tell me what is what. When it comes to beige, I get very confused. The phone on the left is newer vintage 74, the other is 58, the 58 says 60 on the dial plate, the 74 has no color designation.
To me they are both beige, one light and one dark. The handset on the right has been partially cleaned up, and matches the inside of the cap.
D/P, I know you asked Dennis, but to my eyes the left 1974 one is ivory and the right 1958 one is light beige with a faded housing. The dial face is hard plastic since it dates to 1960 and the plastics have different rates of fading. I've seen phones that came out of the factory in 1959 with both kinds of plastic and they just fade differently. Normally the hard plastic fades a little more than the soft, but in your case, the hard plastic dial is exactly the right color.
Dark beige is a rosy color made only from 1953-1957 and it has white numbers on the dial face, as Dennis said. And as you've seen by Jester's pictures, it varies and sometimes turns ashen, which is lighter and more of a dead fleshtone color.
A lot of the variation you see is due to fading and inside the handset is usually the original color. Sometimes it's from cigarette smoke and sometimes from UV and sometimes from the oils in the skin of whoever held the handset. And the degree of exposure determines how dark it gets. Sometimes white can look ivory and in extreme cases, more like butterscotch pudding. Smoke can get in the cap holes and inside the housing, but usually the inside of the handset is protected. That's where I look to find the true color.
Also, I like your logo cards. That's what the phone company put in them oftentimes when they did a phone display, from what I've seen in magazines.
