Magnum Mania!

Hi, all.

I love and collect antique phones (I mentioned at least one in a previous post). Anyway, today I was watching "Flashback" (ep 3.7) and I enjoyed all of the vintage phones. But then I also took note of Magnum's 80s phone, and I wondered what it was. I asked on a phone group, and eventually learned that this was a GTE Automatic Electric type 182 (Starlite) phone, and I found a web page describing many of the phones used on the show.

I thought others might be interested as well.

I might need to buy a Starlite phone now. Those are pretty easy, but boy are the Chronosport Sea Quartz watches super difficult to find!

I love the old phones. My mom had me install a Crosley old school pay phone on her wall. I have no idea if this is anything more than an expensive piece of plastic but it is fun to play with people for the first time ( you get maybe 1 opportunity) - "yes the phone works but you need to drop a quarter in it first to be able to dial out."

I think this is the phone - https://www.cudakitchen.com/crosley-195 ... ck-cr56-bk

That's cool, and yeah I'd like to have a pay phone myself.

eagle wrote: ↑Thu May 06, 2021 10:11 pm Hi, all.

I love and collect antique phones (I mentioned at least one in a previous post). Anyway, today I was watching "Flashback" (ep 3.7) and I enjoyed all of the vintage phones. But then I also took note of Magnum's 80s phone, and I wondered what it was. I asked on a phone group, and eventually learned that this was a GTE Automatic Electric type 182 (Starlite) phone, and I found a web page describing many of the phones used on the show.

I thought others might be interested as well.

I might need to buy a Starlite phone now. Those are pretty easy, but boy are the Chronosport Sea Quartz watches super difficult to find!

Hey, that's written by our resident firearms expert MaximRecoil! Looks like he's a phone nut too! Fun post, thanks.



Keep that ebay search going for a Chronosport - they do turn up (that's how I got mine). Prices are pretty nuts these days though - pretty much nothing under $1000.

eagle wrote: ↑Thu May 06, 2021 10:11 pm Those are pretty easy, but boy are the Chronosport Sea Quartz watches super difficult to find!

Hey Eagle,

Here's a Chronosport up on ebay in a standard auction: https://www.ebay.ca/itm/Chronosport-Sea ... 3453599602

It's located here in Canada and the seller doesn't have much feedback, so that may deter some bidders. Looks legit to me. It's a later dial variant with "Sea Quartz 30" written on the bottom (Magnum had the no writing variant and the one that says just "Quartz", but it does have the black day/date wheel like Magnums (and those are not easy to find).

Thanks, yeah, I've been watching that one. Not sure my, um, budget coordinator... would support that purchase request.

I’d like a red Ericofon like the original Robin Masters hotline.

Styles Bitchley wrote: ↑Fri May 07, 2021 8:37 pm Hey, that's written by our resident firearms expert MaximRecoil! Looks like he's a phone nut too! Fun post, thanks.

Indeed. I have several Western Electric phones, including a Fortress payphone that still functions as an actual payphone, so the joke that MikeS mentioned isn't a joke here because it really won't dial out without inserting a quarter. Also, it weighs about 50 pounds so I had to locate a wall stud to mount it to. Here are a few pictures (I have more than one of each of those types of phones, except for the payphone; I do have another real payphone but it's not hooked up and it's not Western Electric):

https://imgur.com/a/8QnNWwJ

Western Electric was the manufacturing arm of the Bell System, and before the government broke up the Bell System, their territory covered most of the US, and they owned all the phones; the customers just leased them. The Bell System prohibited customers from connecting third-party phones to their phone lines, which is why you didn't usually see phones sold in stores prior to '84 if you lived in Bell System territory. Hawaii was one of the exceptions, which is why they used mainly Automatic Electric phones rather than Western Electric.

Canada had Northern Electric, which was their counterpart to WE, and most of their phones were authorized copies of WE designs, as they were originally owned by WE (one of my 554s has NE guts in a WE shell).

I don't have any nostalgia for AE phones because I'm from Bell System territory (we had a black WE 554 on the kitchen wall, a 500 in the living room, and a 500 in my parents' bedroom when I was a kid), but I still find them interesting when watching MPI because it's so unusual to see them in old TV shows or movies.

The phones at the estate were (may not be an exhaustive list):

- AE 80e plus a red Ericofon or AE 981 "Styleline," depending on the episode, on Higgins' desk.

- Radio Shack Duophone, older or newer version of it, depending on the episode, on the wall next to Higgins desk; another one by the wine cellar door.

- AE 80e on the coffee table in the guest house living room.

- AE 192 on the wall in the guest house kitchen.

- AE 182e "Starlite" in the guest house bedroom. However, in at least one episode ("The Kona Winds") there's a rare appearance of a Western Electric, i.e., a model 500 in the guest house bedroom (I think this scene was showing the guest house bedroom, anyway):



Also, in the "Flashback" episode, the antique phone in the guest house bedroom was a Western Electric 202 with an E-series handset (one of the most beautiful phones ever made in my opinion). Those can't ring or dial out by themselves, because they don't have a ringer or network. They need to be used in conjunction with a "subset" (subscriber set), which is a separate box that contains a ringer and network. The 302 was WE's first phone that integrated the ringer and network into the desk set, eliminating the need for a subset.