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  #1  
Old 01-11-2019, 09:26 AM
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Public (pay) phones

I'm curios:
1) Does any one around here collects public (pay) phones;
2) If you do want to install an public phone in the U.S.A., do they still accept that. In Romania, if you want to install one (coin operated - no one will buy prepayed cards for public phones) I think they will look at you as you just got down from an flying saucer.
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Old 01-11-2019, 05:25 PM
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Penn Station in NYC still had a few by the Long Island RR waiting area, when I was there last month...
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Old 01-11-2019, 07:33 PM
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About %90 percent of pay phones I see had their handsets cut off...And that is when the phone remains...I see more blank wall areas in buildings and stripped outdoor payphone boxes missing their phone than actual pay phones.

ISTR hearing that you can pulse dial a pay phone with the headset hook to bypass the pay mech... I'm not sure I ever used a payphone, and I can only remember seeing my folks use them a handfull of times.
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Old 01-11-2019, 07:58 PM
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Payphones up here were controlled mainly by the regional telephone companies (BC Tel, SaskTEL, AGT, and NBtel for example) until Bell and Telus started absorbing the provincial networks and I don't seem to recall there was ever really a market for private payphones as the rental and leasing rates were so low. Most of our payphones were built by Northern Telecom. These days unless you got an older one before everything was upgraded to the Millennium system you are stuck either importing a payphone from the United States or figuring out how to locally operate a Nortel Millennium network.

Last edited by MIPS; 01-11-2019 at 08:05 PM.
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Old 01-11-2019, 08:08 PM
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I heared about "Millenium". What exactly it is?
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Old 01-13-2019, 02:27 AM
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The last pay phone I saw was at a park and it was still branded Qwest. Haven’t seen a single one in the last few years since then. The only payphone I would want to collect would be one of those pay phones in the red box from Britain.
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Old 01-13-2019, 03:45 PM
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https://etimpu.com/2011/07/11/aminti...-public-t-m-3/
http://www.latrecut.ro/2009/01/telefoane-vechi/
http://amintirifrumoase.ro/obiecte/telefon-public-3/
https://www.craiovaforum.ro/cumparar...n-1018930.html
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Old 01-13-2019, 04:36 PM
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My company had me install one in the company eating area lounge After a year or 2, they came & took it out as nobody used it enuf to make it even remotely profitable for Bellsouth to keep it going. As I was the company Purchasing agent, I had access to any "Live" phone in the whole place, as did anyone else if they really needed it. Getting the payphone was sort of a real waste, to be honest..
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Old 01-13-2019, 07:24 PM
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I haven't seen a working pay phone in ages. There's still a booth up the road, but there's nothing in it. Here's a pic from google street view:

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File Type: jpg phonebooth.jpg (94.4 KB, 60 views)
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Old 01-14-2019, 02:21 AM
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I have an old payphone. American, maybe 50s or 60s. In McCormick Place convention center in Chicago, there are banks upon banks of payphone... not booths, but like stalls. I mean like maybe 100. Now most of them are just empty, but there are still one or two phones.

Last edited by MadMan; 01-14-2019 at 02:31 AM.
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Old 01-14-2019, 08:31 AM
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I remember an old trick with pay phones, the old rotary dial kind, that learned in the '60s. You could drop a penny into the nickel slot and at the same time bump the coin return button, and the penny would go on through and connect the phone to make a call. Making calls for 1˘.
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Old 01-14-2019, 11:10 AM
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In Romania people insterted all kind of stuff into the phones. Kids blocked the slot in order to get money.
First model of pay phones used in Romania initially I think runed with tokens, not money.
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Old 01-14-2019, 11:59 AM
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Mad Magazine once produced a sticker that looked like the AT&T pay telephone logo, but the text read "We hate people who come in just to use the PAY PHONE." Now a very, very dated joke.
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Old 01-14-2019, 01:06 PM
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When I was a kid, I'd go to the grocery store with my mother. Of course, she'd just let me wander off. I'd check all the coin returns on the gumball machines, the pay phones, and the arcade machines. I'd almost always come up with something.
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Old 01-14-2019, 01:15 PM
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Nice for you. I guessed you satisfied some of your small wishes with that.
I think that will be very rare chances when I would use an pay phone - coin operated, of course. But I think it would be some kind of pleasent event when I would do it. But in Romania no more... coin operated pay phones are gone here since 2000 - the price of calls was always on the rise and they had enough of modifing phones for greater prices.
In 2015 when I was in Varna, Bulgaria they still had coin operated public phones, I wished to use one but I didn't got the chance. I should persuaded using one. When you miss the chance, you might miss it for ever.
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