excerpted from "Browsing pleasure, peril in virtual aisles" by Elizabeth Weise, USA Today, 12/2/98
While looking for other telephone sites on Yahoo!, I noticed a category labeled Antiques and Collectibles a few lines down. My spouse has been mooning over those copies of 1940s phones in the Pottery Barn catalog for months.
I stopped in at Old Phones (www.oldphones.com) and found the real thing, an authentic Western Electric #302 in mint condition and rewired to work with a modern phone jack, for only $85 plus shipping.
Jonathan Finder, who refurbishes the phones, doesn't sell directly over the Web. Instead, you send him e-mail, he e-mails back the total, you mail him a check, and he mails you the phone.
Every on-line safety list will suggest you stick to big, corporate sites, where you know you have recourse if things don't work out. And they'll certainly suggest you use a credit card, so if something goes wrong you can cancel the transaction.
But sometimes you just have to go with your heart. His Old Phones site is full of history, referrals to other collectors, even tips for a good polish-as well as a phone number, with a blinking admonition not to call after 10 p.m. Eastern time.
It just didn't feel like a scam site. A Sunday afternoon phone call confirmed it. I learned that Finder is a pediatrician at the University of Pittsburgh who collects and reconditions old phones as his hobby.
They're beautiful, he says. "It's a wonderful thing that you can make an old electromechanical object work exactly today as it did then."