[VerbalKint]

From the Wall Street Journal:

To the Heirs' Dismay,
Mr. Prosser's Calling
Was Old Telephones
His Legacy Overruns a Town,
Which Wants It Cleared;
Collectors vs. the Landfill
By CHRISTOPHER RHOADS
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

October 10, 2005

TURTLE LAKE, Wis. -- In a dilapidated former creamery here, Becky Rongstad edged her way down a tight passage snaking through 20-foot-high mountains of telephones.

Thousands of tan plastic rotary-dial phones reached to the roof in tangles of cords. Piles of more distinctive models, such as phones affixed to beanbags or shaped like a genie's bottle, tumbled into the narrow walkways. Some phones were covered in dust, others wrapped and unused in their original boxes.

"It's more than anyone wants to deal with," said Ms. Rongstad, a 62-year-old retired dairy farmer.


When the collector of the phones, Robert Prosser, died in 2003 at the age of 81, Ms. Rongstad, his niece, and her three siblings inherited the unusual collection -- and a problem: what to do with it.

Around this town of 1,089 people, the heirs now own a half-dozen other buildings, including a gymnasium, full of similar heaps of mixed-vintage phones -- more than 750,000 in all. At its peak, the collection numbered more than a million phones, making it the largest private phone collection in the world, Mr. Prosser claimed. "The next guy has about 10,000 phones and he bought them from me," he once boasted to the St. Paul Pioneer Press.

Now, the town wants the phones gone so it can restore some of the rundown warehouses, such as the 1928 gymnasium, as historic buildings. Ms. Rongstad's brother, Lance Gore, co-executor of the estate with her, thinks the collection is worth more than a million dollars and wants to hold out for a single buyer. Ms. Rongstad would like to be rid of the problem, even if that means dumping some of the phones in a landfill.

Aghast at that idea, antique phone buffs want to pick over the sprawling collection for rare models and parts. "I'd like to have the rotary dials out of there," says Ronald Knappen, who started his own antique-phone business, 130 miles south in Galesville, Wis., with inventory he bought from Mr. Prosser in the early 1970s.

Mr. Prosser got hooked on phones while growing up during the Depression. His family owned the Turtle Lake Telephone Co., which provided service to about 600 homes in a nine-mile radius of town. His mother, Ruth, worked the manual switchboard as the town operator. The family lived in a small apartment in the back of the phone office.

At the time, there were more than 5,000 such tiny, independent phone companies across the U.S. But big phone companies were buying them up, in the process modernizing equipment and rendering huge numbers of phones obsolete.

Mr. Prosser began collecting these castoffs after reading about a man collecting Ford Model T cars and parts in the 1930s. The collector was betting the vehicle would become valuable one day.


A portion of Robert Prosser's phone collection piled up in a former creamery.

Just out of high school at the time, Mr. Prosser figured the same would be true of old telephones. He began with wooden wall-phones, including many that his family's company was replacing with newer models.

After the war, he took over the family phone company but left enough time to travel extensively to acquire rare models. Among them were an ornate crank-operated Eiffel Tower phone from France, a cradle phone with Arabic lettering that Mr. Prosser claimed was owned by the last sultan of Turkey and a 1903 phone made of iron.

He also bought phones in bulk. With European governments revamping their damaged phone systems after the war, more unwanted phones became available. Mr. Prosser gobbled them up, once purchasing 60,000 phones from the Belgian government. That acquisition required five boxcars to ship to Turtle Lake, about 80 miles northeast of Minneapolis.

"He has telephone-itis," proclaimed a 1988 "Ripley's Believe It or Not!" comic-book feature on him and his burgeoning collection.

Nostalgic customers around the U.S. converted Mr. Prosser's wooden phones for use as planters, spice racks and liquor cabinets. The well-built devices also still worked as phones, making them popular in remote areas without phone service. Farmers, lumber companies and miners could string up their own private phone systems for their working needs.

The 60,000 phones that Mr. Prosser bought in Belgium, which cost him 40 cents apiece, were initially resold for $1.50. By the late 1980s Mr. Prosser was charging $300 for them.

A private collection in his basement included more-valuable models, such as an explosion-resistant military phone, a 14-carat gold Swedish phone and a "Silver Princess," which had a head of a princess that split open to reveal a phone.

Between used phones and the family phone business, sold in 1991, Mr. Prosser grew wealthy. That fueled other hobbies. After his wife, Erma, died in 1983, he began spending more time in Las Vegas, says Connie Chumas, who was Mr. Prosser's stockbroker for 30 years and lives in nearby Eau Claire, Wis.


"He loved the dice," says Mr. Chumas, who occasionally traveled with Mr. Prosser on gambling trips. "It was not unusual for him to have $50,000 to $100,000 on a table at a time." Ms. Rongstad says she still receives letters from several Las Vegas casinos demanding payment on his debts.

But Mr. Prosser never stopped buying phones, believing even the latest models would become valuable some day, too. The collection grew to the end of his life: While he was on his deathbed, two truckloads of phones arrived from Canada, says Ms. Rongstad.

"I once asked Bob what we'd do with all these phones if something ever happened to him," says Ms. Rongstad, who as a child cleaned phones for her uncle for 25 cents apiece. "He told me that if we didn't want them, he'd give them to someone else. We should've told him to do that."

At the old gymnasium, stacks of phones blocked dormer windows. To move them from the loading area to the second floor, a conveyor belt had been run through a hole cut in the upper floor. One large wooden bin alone, with names like Trendline and Contempra scrawled on the sides, contained more than 30,000 phones, estimated George Pearson, 69. Together with his wife, Fern, 89, he had categorized and unloaded all the phones that Mr. Prosser bought.

"People would ask me what I do for a living," said Mr. Pearson, who quit his job as a fireman in the 1980s to work for Mr. Prosser. "I told them if they didn't see it they wouldn't understand it."

Ms. Rongstad is working with the town to apply for a grant from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources to clean up the sites. The creamery, which the town wants to condemn, may be contaminated with asbestos. She's talking with a Boston-based exporter who has expressed interest in buying the collection. And she's wondering whether there's potential as a tourist attraction.

"You have to come up with something really creative, like building a huge phone out of all the phones," suggested William Bell, the town administrator, to Ms. Rongstad in his office. He quipped that such an attraction would not be so farfetched, noting "there is a troll museum in Wisconsin."

[BlackRatchet]

Seriously, I (and a lot of other collectors) would pay a goodly amount to pick throught that mess.

I can only imagine what goodies exist in there.

[PyleFMJ]

VerbalKint, on Oct 10 2005, 05:18 PM, said:

"You have to come up with something really creative, like building a huge phone out of all the phones," suggested William Bell, the town administrator,

Ironic that the mayor has the name of Bell. Anyone know how to contact the people to see if someone could buy a few fones?

[spoekalb]

I drive through that town every time I go to the lake. I think my grandmother bought a magneto wall phone from there once actually.

[Liife]

It would be nice if there was some contact information to buy phones from that dude or to go through that phone collection.

[Rightcoast]

I am in contact with the heirs. I need BlakeOPS and anyone else local, or interested in looking through this collection to post or get in contact with me. They are willing to allow people to buy the phones on a piece basis, but very soon the whole collection is getting "recycled" :blink:

One entire building is falling apart. They are seeking a "DNR grant" to tear the structure down, and can't allow anyone in that one. The others are OK. Phones from the 40's 50's 60's 70's and 80's are in the remaining buildings that can be seen. Seen is a relative word. Her words
"It is hard to convey what a half a million phones looks like. Many are in corn bins you cant even have any hope of getting to the bottom of."

So, anyone interested seriously....get in contact with me or post here. I will setup a period where you can have access. :)

EDIT: I am being sent an Excel spreadsheet detailing most of the contents of the collection...and a link to photos of many of the phones from Becky's brother. I will share them when I get them. :)

This post has been edited by Evolve: 14 October 2005 - 11:55 AM

[Rightcoast]

Pheer my skip trace skills :P

The phones will all be sold hopefully. I talked to him a little, and all phones will be sold in a month or so. After that, remainders will be recycled. There will be an auction for the "wooden phones" (his words), and the "plastic phones" will be sold as well as they can manage. So yeah, anyone who wants to know about the antique phones and the auction... The Antique Telephone Collectors Association will notify date and time in their newsletter according to Mr. Gore. I will also update this thread. The Plastic ones are a little up in the air...but I have left things open and can set up a date time to meet, since I have a good repoire established, or feel free to contact him yourself I suppose. Keep in mind he is not interested in one person going to buy one phone. A couple people or a single person who wants a few, no problem. Seriously inquiries only please out of respect.

Here is a link to photos of many of the phones.
http://www.oldphonem...om/GoreSale.htm

Here is an Excel spreadsheet listing most of the collections contents, and Mr. Gores contact info.
http://rapidshare.de...e_List.xls.html

;)

[P(?)NYB(?)Y]

wow, all those phones.....

anyone got a tissue?

thanks for posting the contact info, Evolve!

[Alkali Jack]

Sweet pictures Evolve.

What exactly do you suppose this one is:
http://www.oldphonem...phones_0029.jpg

Am I a total psyco for thinking that that's a teletype? Did they really look like that?

[lucky225]

Alkali Jack, on Oct 14 2005, 03:37 PM, said:

Sweet pictures Evolve.

What exactly do you suppose this one is:
http://www.oldphonem...phones_0029.jpg

Am I a total psyco for thinking that that's a teletype?  Did they really look like that?

probably an old TeleGRAM machine.. I'm totally fearing, see if you can't get me some old school payphones ;)

[Alkali Jack]

lucky225, on Oct 15 2005, 03:45 AM, said:

Alkali Jack, on Oct 14 2005, 03:37 PM, said:

Sweet pictures Evolve.

What exactly do you suppose this one is:
http://www.oldphonem...phones_0029.jpg

Am I a total psyco for thinking that that's a teletype?  Did they really look like that?

probably an old TeleGRAM machine.. I'm totally fearing, see if you can't get me some old school payphones ;)

OK, I've reasearched this a little, and I don't understand the difference between a teletype and a telegram machine. Isn't a telegram just a message that can be sent with a teletype (among other devices, like a morris code key)?

[GIJoe]

Isnt a telegram old-school morse code sent by manually pushing a switch to a contact? And a teletype interprets type turns it to morse, and can send it to another teletype which interprets the morse and prints out the type?

[Strom Carlson]

According to Wikipedia:

Quote

Telegraphy (from the Greek words tele = far and graphein = write) is the long-distance transmission of written messages without physical transport of letters, originally over wire. Radiotelegraphy or wireless telegraphy transmits messages using radio. This definition includes recent forms of data transmission such as fax, email, and computer networks in general.

Therefore, a telegram is the actual message delivered over either a teletypewriter or a manual telegraph key.