More than anything I thought you and others should be aware of the potential value some of these items may have. All of us have chucked what we considered to be junk into the trash but sometimes it is incredible what collectors will pay for them.

while it is worthy and charitable to give to those who are preserving out telecom heritage, in this economy some of our fellow phone techs may be the ones in need of some extra cash.

This is not to discourage donations but keep in mind that sometimes the recipient may end-up flipping them himself.

As in the example I previously cited, if Carl decided to donate the crossbar pbx to a collector that is fine; however, if he is not aware that it has a potential worth of up to 5K and if he were in need of some extra cash for his children's education or another family members immediate needs then it would be a shame to give it away to a collector who may eventually flip it himself once he has tired of it.

Now that I have dictated what others should do, I have to admit to being hypocritical since I often donate collectable items to aspiring telephone collectors at our phone shows or in response to request that has been posted on our collecting listserves and have rarely sold anything either face-to-face or on eBay, in part, because I can't bring myself to sell something that I used to throw away when I worked for the telephone company.

However, a number of years ago I woke-up to the fact that some were abusing my largess when I gave away some items of moderate value to a collector who“just had to have” them when, even before I was out of earshot he told a fellow collector how much he thought he could sell them for on eBay. While I still donate items, I try to be a bit more aware of the circumstances before turning loose of them.

Sorry for rambling on!