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Wisconsin couple has old phones and nobody to buy them

81 points| cainxinth | 2 years ago |madison.com | reply

121 comments

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[+] not_the_fda|2 years ago|reply
They have a pricing problem. Not many people are going to buy an old analog phone in 2023 for $200 - $300. And the analog to bluetooth adapter they are selling is $80 and shouldn't cost more than $20.

If they dropped the prices to between $50 and $100 they might sell as a novelty.

[+] euniceee3|2 years ago|reply
Totally agree. Some of the older stuff used to be worth money, but seems like they were not focused on sales/marketing.

Just to haul it all off to the dump would cost a fair amount.

I think they need to hire a zoomer on commission to promote the phones on TikTok and shilling them away with the bluetooth adapter being free. Tie this in with a giant telephone art project to draw folks in.

[+] anymouse123456|2 years ago|reply
Came for the massive scoop on this couple who own (gasp), "tens of old phones."

Pleasantly surprised by the collection of unambiguously, not-cellular, vintage phones, including rotary dialers.

[+] dang|2 years ago|reply
Title edit fail. Fixed now. Sorry!
[+] underseacables|2 years ago|reply
It's a shame that things increase in value, and lose value, both monetarily and sentimentally. I had a couple of dozen Monopoly sets from the 1930s that I had obtained in college. They didn't take up that much space, and spent a lot of time sealed in plastic in the attic. Last year I tried to sell them but nobody wanted them, so I just threw them all away. It's sad, because I had a real passion for those, and really enjoyed them, but after 20 years they were just in the way.
[+] anonymouskimmer|2 years ago|reply
It's too late for your monopoly games, but for anyone looking to get rid of something it doesn't take much effort to search "donate X" and find a bunch of possible options other than the dump.
[+] wayfinder|2 years ago|reply
I just checked eBay and a vintage Monopoly set sells every few days.
[+] __MatrixMan__|2 years ago|reply
I don't think it's a shame that there are multiple types of value which often disagree. In fact I'm quite happy that attempts to reduce experience into an optimization problem where each thing has a consistent untyped value are doomed to fail. If it were possible, it would've happened long ago and there would be no reason to bother with that awkward consciousness thing that we tend to do sometimes.

I'm sorry you were conflicted about throwing something precious away, but those are the conflicts that life is made of.

[+] genman|2 years ago|reply
How did you try to sell them? Did you list them on eBay or did you try to contact some auction houses or did you look for some gaming groups or forums?
[+] driverdan|2 years ago|reply
As others have pointed out the problem isn't demand, it's pricing. I watch a few auction sites for antique phones. They always sell. The problem is they sell for about half of what Phoneco wants.

If they listed their inventory on eBay over a period of a few years with no reserve they could easily sell everything.

I'd buy a pay phone from them today if the price was right. It's not.

[+] system2|2 years ago|reply
If they cleaned up and listed individually on eBay, they might actually make some money. There is still a great prop business for movie studios. Creating a niche site and marketing it to collectors with the internet would solve part of their sitting inventory problem.

I know they are old people and might not have the energy and knowledge to do it but there could be a potential solution. Maybe their grandchildren could do it...

[+] PumpkinSpice|2 years ago|reply
Right. It's not even that they need to create a market. These things are already selling on eBay for hundreds of dollars. I guess it's a fairly common decor element for offices and homes. The same goes for old typewriters.

There are obsolete electronics that would be a lot harder to sell, for example CRT TVs - but phones are basically free money.

[+] dehrmann|2 years ago|reply
> There is still a great prop business for movie studios.

There aren't many, and they probably have what they need already. Wouldn't hurt to reach out. They might take 10 or 20 off your hands with a generous bulk discount.

[+] user3939382|2 years ago|reply
We used to have a functioning wooden wall phone in our house. I looked up the price, almost $400. I would buy one for like... $100 as a novelty.
[+] bhickey|2 years ago|reply
Tens of thousands.

Their catalog looks like a good source for period movie props.

[+] gwern|2 years ago|reply
If I'm reading the middle correctly, that's exactly what happened: they got too used to selling period phones to Hollywood for a high price, and failed to note that while that business was wonderful, this is an intrinsically declining source of demand and that smartphones were busy wiping out their entire future market of 'period movies' (no one needs their prop phones for anything set in the past 20 years, soon, 30 years).

They had good cashflow, could blind themselves to the transition because they were so old, leaped at what used to be opportunities but now were being dumped on them as suckers - and that's how they wind up being the last holders of the fast-depreciating hot potatoes.

[+] yencabulator|2 years ago|reply
Old phones are heavy, the prop department likely prefers a lightweight modern reproduction.
[+] ChumpGPT|2 years ago|reply
Several problems here. They are both hoarders to some extent. They see value in something that is dear to them but junk to most of us. They continued to acquire stock over the years without any plan to get rid of what they had. Children have no interest in getting involved, probably tired of trying to get through to them and not being able to change their behavior, resigned to just waiting for them to pass and throwing it all away. It really is a kind of abuse left to the children to deal with, a financial and logistical nightmare.

At this point everything they have should be offered to every museum across the country for free or a tax write off. What is left, sort through and keep 1 of everything worth keeping. The rest should probably get recycled consider there is copper and possibly other metals worth something.

There are 1000's of these kinds of scenarios across the country. Old folks who just can't let shit go.

[+] autoexec|2 years ago|reply
High prices are part of the problem, but I don't doubt that this stuff could sell at these high prices if they were able to keep them on offer long enough. If old phones aren't cool right now they will be again soon enough. More likely somebody is going to make a killing in the estate sale.

The website could use a little work. I actually like the old school design, but higher rez photos, re-organization (there are five different places for novelty phones! https://www.phonecoinc.com/list.asp?map=1), and removing sold out models (or at least moving them to their own section) would make using it a lot easier.

[+] jjr8|2 years ago|reply 

  Well, Mack the Finger said to Louie the King
  "I got forty red-white-and-blue shoestrings
  And a thousand telephones that don't ring
  Do you know where I can get rid of these things?"
  And Louie the King said, "Let me think for a minute, son"
  Then he said, "Yes, I think it can be easily done
  Just take everything down to Highway 61"
Bob Dylan - Highway 61 Revisited
[+] ttymck|2 years ago|reply
I have little sympathy for them, if that's what we're supposed to feel. Maybe the article was poorly written but it seems like "they've tried nothing and are all out of ideas".

I would appreciate it if stories like this continue to make headlines. Let them be a warning to all our parents. No doubt this will end up being an unpleasant mess for their children to clean up.

[+] HenryBemis|2 years ago|reply
> an unpleasant mess for their children to clean up

People massively underestimate the amount of pain and discomfort it causes to have to sort out a house filled with useless stuff, ON TOP of the GREAT pain of losing a parent.

When my grandma died, 6 adults (her 3 kids and spouses) were cleaning a 50 sqm flat for a week. The amount of worthless paperwork, magazines, newspapers, tchotchkes, bank statements from 40 years ago.. clothes/towels/bed-sheets for 10 people.. unreasonable volume of stuff (she was not a hoarder per se - the flat was spotless and you could easily walk from room to room), just needing enormous cleaning/maintenance and offering zero value.

I believe we should all check out lists like "how to prepare for dying" with our elder parents. It's a bit morbid and not a fun discussion for the Sunday dinner, but hey.. business before pleasure..

[+] monocasa|2 years ago|reply
Awesome! I've been converting my house's existing phone lines into an intercom system, and have on my list to get a kitsch phone for each room.
[+] LesZedCB|2 years ago|reply
woah. that's actually an awesome idea... so do you dial a room?
[+] okasaki|2 years ago|reply
And there was thinking that I was crazy by having a dozen old thinkpads...
[+] yencabulator|2 years ago|reply
Imagine how weird your stash of old laptops will look like when you're in your 80s. You still have time to get to their level...
[+] steelbird|2 years ago|reply
They could lower their prices...
[+] floren|2 years ago|reply
Yeah I'm sympathetic but this feels like something you see over and over -- rather than adapt to reduced demand / value of your product by lowering prices, just throw your hands in the air and declare that you're stuck with this stuff forever.

See the perpetually for sale, perpetually overpriced cars of Craigslist.

[+] ShadowBanThis01|2 years ago|reply
Yep. I would consider driving up there to have a look and take a few off their hands... but at those prices, nope. They're going to have to blow these things out well under $100 each.
[+] dehrmann|2 years ago|reply
There's probably more supply than demand. The price will go down to the point of their warehouse costs and opportunity cost of running the business. It's a passion business, so low.
[+] causality0|2 years ago|reply
I'm amazed there's not a standard model converter box that plugs into RJ-11 that gives you a bluetooth connection and forwards the dialing numbers to your smartphone.
[+] HeyLaughingBoy|2 years ago|reply
Huh!

That could actually be a fun project and shouldn't be very difficult with an ESP32. I've done some PSTN design work (although it was 20+ years ago). Maybe I'll put it on the Winter project list :-)

[+] 5kil5aw|2 years ago|reply
Sex sells. Get some hot looking mouths to call each other on those French handsets, they'll be flying out of there. But yeah, 'BT adapter included".
[+] ShadowBanThis01|2 years ago|reply
I saw that title and thought wow, we're really scraping the bottom for content here if TENS of phones makes news.
[+] qup|2 years ago|reply

[deleted]

[+] pomian|2 years ago|reply
That is an amazing collection. Many of them have been refurbished and fixed. I don't think the prices are that high. There are many unique pieces, and compared to the price of other things out there, prices ok. There is some solid stuff, with real build quality. Shipping might be a problem. Definitely gives one ideas for cool projects!