October 10, 2005
The Phone Collector
One man left his heirs more than 750,000 phones, spanning the history of the technology, reports the WSJ.
"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.
Now, the town wants the phones gone so it can restore some of the rundown warehouses.
Mr. Prosser got hooked on phones while growing up during the Depression. 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.
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."
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