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THE PHONE CARD’S WAY INTO
THE COLLECOR’S ALBUMS
by Jan-Eric Nilsson
During most of the Eighties,
thousands of small blue cards were thrown away in garbage cans and
around the phone boxes in Uppsala. They were the first Swedish phone
cards tested by Televerket (the Swedish telecom)
Here is the ”Stockholmscard”, an
early test card
Also the following
generation of phone cards were test cards, but with a nicer picture and
design. The first cards have become very difficult to find due to the
fact that they were thrown away and the second generation of cards was
issued only in very small numbers.
The cards of the third generation were the ones that
became the Swedish standard and when Televerket started introducing
phone boxes with phones for the use of phone cards they also decided to
promote the phone cards as a collectors’ item.
They started a big campaign to make collecting phone
cards a hobby and as a result thousands of persons showed their interest
in this new hobby. After this, all new phone cards with commercial
messages were printed in an excess number of 2000 that were mainly
intended for the collectors, but they were not for sale from the issuing
date. In order to give the companies who ordered the cards the exclusive
right for a while the cards could be bought only after six months. Of
all the other cards, Televerket always kept 500 in order to make it
easier for collectors to buy them.
The Stockholm Central
Station became a gathering point
The collectors who often knew about the new phone cards before anyone
else were the ones who met every day in the Stockholm Central Station to
keep an eye on all the phone cards that were used (and on the empty ones
that were thrown away).
As soon as anyone waved with a new card, the collector went up to the
person by the phone box. He then introduced himself as a phone card
collector and wondered if he could get the card he/she held in his/her
hand in exchange for another card that had twice the number of units.
Most of the time the collector received a positive response to his
suggestion and happily he put the new card in a plastic case. He had to
be careful with his findings.
This is the ”Uppsalacard” –
the first card
ever tested in Sweden.
Executive Committee meetings in the
station!
The members of the Central Station group were mainly men who had reached
a certain age. It was also these men who came up with the idea to found
the Swedish Phone Card Collectors’ Society. And it was at the Central
Station that the society held its meetings.
That people had been collecting phone cards in other parts of the world
for quite some time already was confirmed by the fact that collectors
from other countries came to the station during the summers to find
Swedish phone cards.
The encounters with these foreign collectors led to exchanges of phone
cards, experiences and addresses. Swedish collectors who went abroad
also went to railway stations and airports to find cards and meet
collecting colleagues. These activities led to a quick
internationalisation of the hobby.
The amount of time the phone card collectors have spent in the Central
Station the last decade, eagerly looking for new phone cards, can
without a doubt be measured in hundreds of thousands of hours. The
activities in the Central Station have not ceased to exist, but now also
more organised exchange meetings take place at least one a month in Fältöversten
in Stockholm. The same building is used for the annual phone card
exhibition. The collectors’ gatherings in Stockholm will be held on
Kungsholmen starting next year.
The idea of exchange meetings has spread to other parts of the country
and now such meetings are arranged also in Borås, Gothenburg and Malmö.
Of course not only promotion cards (cards with a commercial message)
were kept and put in albums, but those were the ones the collectors
talked about and showed to each other. The reason being that at the
Central Station it was very easy to find all varieties of the
“public” phone cards, that were sold in shops and kiosks.
varandra.
Prices rose after Telia Card broke its
promise
Many collectors (and of course even those who sell phone cards) were one
day surprised by an announcement made by Telia Card. In a newsletter
they revealed that there was a group of cards not being kept for the
collectors. They were cards that were used to promote prescription
medicine.
The promise Telia Card had given the collectors to keep an amount of all
cards available for collectors only was all of a sudden no longer valid.
These “medicine cards” became the collectors’ most wanted cards
over night and the sellers were not late in responding to the demand.
Normally the price for a promotion card was between SEK 100 and 200. Now
the prices rose to four digit numbers. The highest price known to have
been paid for a “medicine card” is SEK 3000. Not bad for a phone
card that had been around for less than a year.
Become twice as smart
Already when the collection of phone cards started, the hobby was
compared to stamp collecting. A number of parallels could be seen, but
also many differences. Everyone probably agrees that both the collection
of stamps and the collection of phone cards are hobbies worth taking
seriously. Both of them are enriching in many ways, not least in a
global perspective. Both stamps and phone cards inspire ideas, curiosity
and knowledge about the world we live in.
How many times have we not been forced to look in encyclopaedias to
identify animals, plants, flags, presidents, kings, etc? We have made
discoveries within the fields of art, politics, science, history and so
on.
Finally I want to say something to the person who once meant that only
idiots collect phone cards: He is incredibly wrong! One is an idiot if
one does not take advantage of the enriching life the collection of
stamps and phone cards gives!
And who knows, maybe you get twice as smart if you collect both stamps
and phone cards.
Jan-Eric
Nilsson's phone
card page
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