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Posted 3 years ago
potrero
(155 items)
This was a nice display of Automatic Electric three-slot pay phones at the 2007 TCI (Telephone Collectors Intl) Northern California San Jose phone show organized by Gary Goff and Hal Belden.
Someone had a little fun with these phones, repainting them at a minimum - they didn't originally come in all these colors. But they did a nice job with the paper too, showcasing all the different instruction cards (AE sold to independent telcos like GTE, not to the Bell System companies). Note that they all have keys to the bottom locks - hard to find and $$ to replace.
Automatic Electric TelephonesAutomatic Electric was founded in 1891 as Strowger Automatic Telephone Exch…
PayphonesFor the first half of the 20th century, most payphones were built by The Gr…
I beg to differ. I was the person with the payphone display, the payphoneguy, http://www.threeslotpayphone.com
These are ALL ORIGINAL colours from 1957. They were introduced by AE at that time, and noted in their catalogue, the AE 90 (payphone) was available in 12 different colours for an additional $14.10. Choice of all one colour,........or chrome top flag, middle dial instruction holder, vault door and coin return bucket, was a little bit less.
Note the plastics on the phones (dial face plate, shroud, receiver and curly cord) are NOT painted and are original.
AE also offered these same colours for the AE 80 (deskset) AE 183 Spacemaker, (plastic and metal versions) and Starlite model.
Interesting also to note, Northern Electric had the exact same 12 colours for their three slot payphones also, as noted in their catalogue from the day.
These payphones are completely original and almost impossible to find one at a time, let alone all together like this.
Note also in the photo, 2 colours are missing from the 12. Dawn Gray and Ivory, the hardest to come by.
Since then, they have been added and recently the gray one sold for $1000.00 to a collector.
These are the facts about this photo. Rod...... "The Payphone Guy"
Thanks Rod for the correction! I didn't realize AE had made these colors, and spoke too soon! Dave
Iwould like to sell my "yellow" automatic electric company 3 slot payphone and was wondering if there is a place/show in the dallas fort worth area? it is in great condition and works.....also how much is it worth in todays market?