hello,
I recently bought a lot of 18 vintage phones. they consisted of mostly SC, early to mid 70s, ITT, 70s. what caught my eye was 3 LIME GREEN SC phones. 2 500's, and 1 554B. all the phones came WITHOUT ringers, and handset cords. they are all NOS. not in original boxes, but, they have NEVER been installed. I installed ringers, and sold 1 LIME GREEN 500, and the LIME GREEN 554. sold a few other moss green SC 554's too. why did all these phones, apparently new, have no ringers installed???
Perhaps they came from an area with party lines, and an appropriate frequency ringer would be installed when the phones were installed.
What Tommy said. SC and ITT phones were almost exclusively sold to independent telcos. Most independents were on shoestring budgets and had to rely upon frequency-selective ringing in an effort to avoid the expense of plant improvements. It was cheaper to buy phones without ringers and stock them on the trucks with a selection of different ringers that were field-installed based upon the installation requirements.
Your location indicates that you are in NC, a state that is full of independent telcos, so your find doesn't surprise me at all.
Oh yes. The old "mini-ringers" trick. We had trib offices that had Terminal Per Line shelves where the last digit was the ringer frequency, and later the fancy "frequency per shelf" where the 100's digit was the ring frequency and we had to deal with both harmonic and decimonic bells. In truth, normally only the 40/42,50/54 and 66 2/3's ringers had to be selective and the straight-line ringers would work on everything else.
I still have a box of them in my warehouse for my estate sale
https://public.carl.airpost.net/misc/Mini_ringers.JPG
...for my estate sale HA!
I've got a ring generator to test varios cycle bells
Oh what memories! I changed a lot of party line ringers.
You can tell an old telephone man when he picks up a phone and bangs it into the heal of his other hand. Listening to hear if a ringer has been installed by the sound, or lack of, of the clapper hitting the bell.
Jim
....so they, the company, in this case, Lippincott Industries Inc, had the phone company install different ringers in the phones, so that certain numbers would generate frequencies matched to a particular ringer? something like that!!!??? Well, the phones, mostly 554 SC and ITT, which has most, if not all SC internal parts, are NOS, and all from the 70's. I paid $125 for the lot of eighteen, and installed ringers in the 500 and 554 LIME GREEN SC phones, and sold each for $75, so I made my money back already. kept one SC LIME GREEN for myself. don't see many of them around!
Bob, can you post a picture of one of these lime green phones? I've never seen one!
How do I post pics? I tried sending JPG.'s, but you cant open them. Help, pls!
Bob
you need to upload your pictures to a photo hosting site such as Photobucket then you post a link to the image here by clicking on the "enter a image button " when you post
here is a pic of one of my lime green Stromberg carlson 500 set (1979)
![[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]](https://i.imgur.com/DtbsyQ4.jpg)
Very nice!!
Now the only problem there is finding a matching curly handset cord!! Very cool, thank you for sharing!
Nice, I think that standard black cord would make it pop out creating a contrast
Hello,
I sold another SC lime green, 1980, NOS 554, and had no handset cord for it either, and I did put a NOS WE black handset cord on it, and the buyer loved it! I see a few handset cords kicking around for these lime green phones, but they are hard wire cords, these phones are modular. I have one NOS lime green SC 500 set left and needs a handset and cord! I know, good luck with that!!!! next phone im looking to buy is a SC bright orange 500 or 554 set. I just bought a ITT slimline set, bright orange. ill have to post a pic of one of my favs I bought about 2 years ago. its a chrome, 1940s-50s, AE, 3slot payphone. needed some work, had come thru the back of the phone, into the coin vault by taking the back plate off. had no key for the coin vault lock. to my surprise, there was a coin box inside! a rare find for these old 3slots. took the lock out, had a key made, did some other minor wiring, and dial was stuck, freed it up, and wired a modular cord to it, works great! still has the coin relay too, duel coil....bob
In the mid 70's, we impressed many a customer with mixed color faceplates and handsets. Purple covers with yellow faceplate and handset for the H.R. gal and black and white for the maintenance guy. I miss ya, Ma!
hi folks,
here is a pic of my 40s-50s AE chrome 3slot payphone. next to it, is a 50s FORD gumball machine. a gumball for a penny!!!
https://imgur.com/yzxblTc
Cool payphone! The gumball machine is in great shape. Quite a pair of collectables you have there.
Thanks!
the gumball machine just needed some cleaning, inside and out, and I replaced the five rubber suction cups on the bottom, with new ones.
Bob