Explanation

Content:

 

	Collecting and phone cards in general
	Telia Phone cards:          - Article number, year/month and edition          - The Contact (chip o contact)          - Batch and serial number
	Remote Memory Cards          - Tele2          - Telia (Telia Travel Card)

 

Collecting and phone cards in general:

Up

Why collect phone cards ?

A phone card is a genuine article for every day use, it contains modern techniques and often has beautiful pictures or a message to deliver (promotion). Early on many older stamp and coin collectors saw a new and modern area of collecting. Cards distributed in small editions increase the demand and their value increases among collectors.

The number of collectors in Sweden during the 20th century rose from a hand full of enthusiasts to thousands of more or less active collectors. Catalogues with pictures and price lists from card publishers and dealers have existed since 1993.

Early on collecting cards became a great hobby abroad. Already in the late 1980-ies the first world wide catalogue was published. The great number of cards distributed has now made it necessary to publish the catalogues per country or picture.

What is collected?

The cards can be unused (“mint”/with all the units left) or used (“used”/with none or few units left). To a collector the quality of the card should be decisive: it is better to have a used card completely without scratches and dirt than an unused card full of scratches and dirt. However some glossy cards without scratches are hard to get hold of.

Like with stamp collecting all cards from a country or region could be collected, but in the long run this could become very expensive. It becomes more and more common to collect one category of cards, for example cards with pictures of sports, cars, nature or animals. It all depends on the collector’s own interests. Abroad the interest for pictures in connection with Coca-Cola, McDonald’s and Disney is big. There are even special catalogues with Coca-Cola cards.

The cards can be divided into public cards and promotion cards. The public cards are sold to the public in kiosks and shops. The promotion cards are bought by companies and used as gifts to customers or in campaigns. Below you will find the explanation to the abbreviations used by the SPCCS that can found in the index.

The cards can be either pre-paid or credited (i.e. you pay for your call afterwards)

How can you get hold of cards?

You can get used cards from friends and family. Ask them to save the cards for you. Your dealer sells both used and unused cards.

When you walk past a phone box you can check to see if someone has left a used card behind. Look on the ground, look around the phone or, if there is one, on the table – a card can be thrown on the ground or squeezed behind the phone.

Equipment

Your dealer can help you get the equipment useful to a collector. There are a lot of different albums or plastic cases to collect cards in. Just remember that the plastic shouldn’t secrete gases that may destroy the cards. Ask your dealer for advice.

When you look at a card it might be useful to have a magnifying glass, maybe with a light, and why not a bright desk lamp. Dirty cards can be cleaned with a mild mixture of soap and water. Be careful when you clean your cards because numbers printed with an ink-jet printer easily disappear. Chips that have oxidised can easily be freshened up with an ordinary clean rubber. Some dealers sell special cleansers.

You can also get your own cardreader to check how many units remain on the cards. The cardreader also makes it possible check the serial number of the cards in a hexadecimal way. With the help of a calculator or a for example Excel the hexadecimal number can be translated to a decimal number. A decimal number has the base 10 (0,1, ..,9) and a hexadecimal the base 16 (0,1, ..,9,10,11, .., 15).

Colour variances, mistakes and forgeries

When the cards are printed the producer might run out of one colour which leads to a colour variance. You should be careful with colour variances because the colours of the cards easily fade in the sun. Some colours, e.g. red, fade quicker than other colours. Some printing techniques cause different colours sensitive to light.

For different reasons a card may end up the wrong way in the making process which e.g. causes the chip to end up on the wrong side of the card. These mistakes are very rare. A more common mistake is that the printed batch or control number ends up on the wrong place.

Unfortunately forgeries exists. A card with a special kind of chip might get it replaced with another one that normally doesn’t exist on that card. To decide whether a chip has been replaced a magnifying glass as well as a cardreader can be used. With the magnifying glass glue, scratches and other things on and around the chip can be detected and with the cardreader you can check if the number of units is in accordance or if the serial number of the chip are in chain with the other cards. If the cardreader shows “ERR” (error) you can almost be sure that you have a forgery in your hand.

Below we will look at the terms uses by Telia to classify their different cards and also sort out the differences that occur due to the fact that there are different producers of the cards and they use different chips, batch and serial numbers etc.

Article number, year/month and edition:

Telia’s information is always stated on the back of the card. On a card with 30 units you might find the following:

LZYA 60111/107 95-11 upplaga 100.000 ex.

This information should be read as follows:

LZYA is an internal term at Telia and can be found an all public cards.

601xx/yyy tells you that it is a prepaid närminneskort (the information is stored in the card), where xx is the number of units, se below and yyy is the serial number among the cards distributed with this amount of units. The above example is the 107th card with 30 units.

95-11 states the year and month when the card was ordered. This means that a card with 95-11 might not be sold until one or several months later seeing as the production takes a certain amount of time.

Upplaga 100.000 ex shows that the ordered edition is of 100 000 cards. However this doesn’t mean that that many cards are for sale. There are examples where a minor or major part of the edition has been destroyed due to manufacturing mistakes.

The contact module:

Different manufacturers have their own contacts with different looks, which is why it is often easy to see who has manufactured the contact. Observe that the chip itself (the integrated circuit) is underneath the contact. Chip + contact = contact module.

If a certain card has two or more different contacts some collectors separate them as different variances of the card. Some contacts can be very rare on some cards, but more common on others. The dealers can give you information about this.

The SPCCS has an index, which shows all known varieties. Below some of the more common contacts are shown.

	SI-4	Sclumberger is the producer of all the SI-chips. The contacts are normally silver coloured, but also golden contacts occur. Mainly on the SI-5 the colour differs next to the metallic contact. Grey, olive green and red occur.
	SI-5
	SI-6
	SI-7
	SO-3	Gold coloured chip from Solaic
	M2	Gold coloured chip from McCorquodales
	O-5	Chip from Orga.
	P-5	Chip from Philips.
	InC-1	Chip from Incard.

On Telia’s stored memory cards, the ordinary chip cards, the information is stored in the chip beneath the contact. The fjärrminneskort have the information stored in a computer, that you call (0200 or 020 numbers). When you reach the computer and its “database” you dial the number mentioned on the card. The computer then knows which card it is and how many minutes/units are left to call for. You then dial the phone number you wish to call.

A lot of people find it hard to dial all the digits – if you make a mistake you have to start all over. However there is help; a little transmitter in which you can store 0200 and 020 numbers. You can even store the number of your card. You then place the sound transmitter on the receiver, press a button and then the numbers are sent as an acoustic signal.

Tele2's remote memory cards:

On the cards from Tele2, among other things, the following information can be found:

- value: the number of units or the number of minutes or the cost of the call
- article number
- print: year and month
- serial number/edition
- last day of use

The maker of the card is often mentioned on the card.

Value

On cards that can be used almost world-wide the value is stated in number of units or the cost of the calls. On local cards, i.e. the cards that can be used only in Sweden either the number of minutes or the cost of the calls is stated.

In Sweden 1 unit = 1 minute = SEK 2

Article number

Normally the cards from Tele2 have an article number as follows: T2xx, where xx states the serial number among distributed cards. Card number two has the article number T202. Two exceptions exist. Card number 3 is in a series of 28 cards and they have the numbers T203:1 – T203:28, and card number 36 is in a series of 10 cards with the numbers T236A – T236J.

Serial number/edition

0440/8500 states that it is card number 440 out of the total edition of 8500 cards.

Other

Tele2 has also printed some special cards. A membership card for Moderata Samlingspartiet is called T2MO and a card for British Airways BA01.

Some public cards are made by Inplastor under the name of Easy2Call. These cards have the article number ETCxxx, where xxx is the serial number among distributed cards.

Telias remote memory cards: Telia Travel Card:

On Telia’s fjärrminneskort, called Telia Travel Card, you will, among other things, find the following information:

- value: number of units
- article number (states the type of card and the serial number of the card)
- year and month
- edition
- last day of use

Value

The value is stated in units. For public cards in Sweden 1 unit = 1 minute = SEK 2.

Article number, serial number

An example of an article number is 60301/003, where 60301 states that it is a public card. 60350 is used for promotion cards. 003 is the card’s serial number among the cards distributed.

On some cards there is also mentioned an internal card number followed by the serial number, e.g. 1/00024. 1 is the internal card number and 24 is the card’s serial number among all the cards printed. In this case the edition is of 14 000 so the serial numbers of the cards are between 00001 and 14000. 

Other

Telia has also printed unofficial Travel Cards using paper. These cards don’t have the information stated above, except for the number of units and last day of use.

From the year 2000 and later cards without the usual article number exist. The SPCCS has chosen to catalogue them as the others.

 © Swedish Phonecard Collectors' Society

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