If you are Dutch, like me, there is no way to avoid it. It tried to do my best but… once in your life you need to post a picture of a windmill.

But there is a good reason. Some time ago I have sold a BPO Orange Ericofon to a lady in the US. She asked me if it was possible to make a picture of the phone with a windmill. As there are 2 windmills quite close to where I live this was fairly easy to do. So I went there and took some pictures.

This windmill is called “De Visscher”. It was build by Ben de Visscher in 1875 and was in service until 1961. All that time it functioned as a flour mill.

This windmill is called “De Wilde” and was build in 1898 by Leonard Kouwenberg. It functioned until December 31st 1936 when it was destroyed by a fire. As from the mid 1970’s it was restored and painted white. It functioned as a flour mill, but also as a mill for oak-tree bark for the local leather industry.

And actually it was a nice suggestion as I like history in general, but local history (and of course Ericofon history) in particular. It was a pity that the weather wasn’t a bit better. A blue sky would have been nicer.

There is not so much news to share at this moment. I can hardly find any interesting new Ericofons. O, don´t understand me wrong, I am not complaining if you see what I added already this year. The 2 swirls were a surprise a few months ago and they are at the center of my collection.

Maybe I just need to manifest another “unreachable” model. It might help, but I hope it does not hurt :-). This one is currently on the top of my most wanted list. The transparent 700.

Modern art and classic art. The combination of old and new things is sometimes beautiful.

This picture was made in my living room. The Ericofons as new art in the cabinet that you already have seen. The classic painting next to it, is a reproduction of a self-portrait of Rembrandt. The painting was made by a local painter Johan Rockx (1892-1952) and it is most likely a study from him dating back to the 1920’s or 1930’s. He became more famous for his “ship and harbor view” paintings later on.

The painting was adopted by my parents around 1970. Two years ago, I inherited this. Not because I think it is beautiful but because it has always been here. It reminds me of my childhood and therefor it will always stay here.

Nice things have happened!

Earlier this month I was contacted by a Swedish Ericofon collector, Johnny. He did have a few interesting Ericofons for me. So in the end I got 2 new Ericofon shells in the mail today (26-02-2026).

The story goes that these 2 Ericofons were taken (…) from the production location by a lady working there. The lady had them on her attic in Olofström until 2001, the moment Johnny got them from her. Now they end up in my collection. Which is very, very nice.

In the beginning of the 1960’s, in the struggle against the de-population in the south of Sweden, an Ericsson production facility was opened in Olofström in the Blekinge region. It closed down in 1982. Most of the Ericofon production took place in Karlskrona, so the Blekinge region was already heavily involved in this production process. It is most likely that these models come from one of the production plants in that region. Olofström itself sounds plausible.

These are not shells that were made in between 2 production colors. In an earlier post on swirls I told that this was the normal way of ‘swirl production’.

In these shells I see at least white, red and some grey in their color palette. The lady who took them confirmed they put some leftover colors in the machine for ‘fun’ and then took the shells home. They must have done this while there was no supervision in the plant. Both shells were taken directly from the molding process as they do not have any after-processing done such as holes and notches.

What is nice to see, is that the swirling pattern is more or less the same on the 2 shells. Although the colors are different, the flow of the plastic is the same every time. Of course this is logical in a industrial production system, but it is nice to see that they are actually twins.

To get swirls in my collection was a dream that I never thought was possible. So far, I have never seen any swirls for sale in the past years. Thanks Johnny to give me the opportunity to get these 2 nice ones!

The development of the push-button telephone was merely done at Bell Labs, with the DTMF system being invented in 1959. The 10-button layout was the result of extensive user research by John E. Karlin and his team at the Human Factors Engineering Department of Bell Labs in 1963. The original design did not include the * and # keys, which were added later to facilitate additional functionality. Plus, DTMF phones were able to generate 12 different tone patterns (3×4 matrix), so why not add 2 buttons for future use. It was until 1968 that 10 buttons were quite common. So far history…

Below is a picture of a set Ericofon parts that I got this week. This is just a part of the whole set, but at least the most interesting part.

So what do we’ve got here? Two NOS shells, a non-wired Touch Tone chassis, some chassis plastics, some dial faces, an extra horse shoe switch and a few ear caps. Let’s have a closer look.

The 2 shells are full Touch Tone shells, but… they do not have any holes for the microphone (yet). My best guess is that they were taken from production to be used for assembling the Touch Tone in an early stage.

Two of the 3 ear caps are still on their production reel. The chassis with the dial-face only has 10 buttons and it is not wired. It is just the mechanical basics. On top of that, the keys do not have any print on them.

On the bottom left picture you can see 2 horseshoe switches. A regular one (on the table) and one from this set (on top of the other). You can see that the length is different which also reflects in a post I made earlier.This also means that the dial-faces of the 10 and 12 button version have different shapes as you can see. Not only that, also the plastic chassis part is different. The last picture shows a 12 button wired chassis versus this one. The shapes differ in quite a lot details.

It seems that the set I bought is a set with some prototyping material, that must be obvious. It is considered that a 10 button Touch Tone Ericofon is a prototype. There has been no reference to this type of keypad in any Ericofon documentation and as far as known they were never sold. They were introduced with 12 buttons from the start. Although a fancy dial-face with 10 buttons exists.

All with all I was quite positively surprised when I got the box with this material in the mail. As it normally goes in online buys, the pictures are not always very clear.

I have assembled 1 prototype, so I can add it to my collection. The transparent dial-face I like the most 🙂

In the category “Not original, but collectible” I have bought another new type of Ericofon. Next to the Nichco metallic phones, and CEAC painted there is a nice third category. These are the ‘fuzz’ Ericofons. I don’t think that I mentioned them before.

Originally this Ericofon was a flat Sahara from 1969, but now the surface is furry and soft. It is a structure applied on the original shell by so called ´flocking´. ´Flocking is the application of millions of tiny fibers onto an adhesive-coated surface to create a velvet-like texture´ according to wikipedia and that is exactly how it was done.

Although the flocked summery structure with its bright yellow color is quite vulnerable, it still looks good.

The fuzz Ericofon was a product of phone companies in the 1970, to enlarge the standard color-set. As far as I know there are 4 colors of this type: Green, Red, Blue and Yellow. At least these colors I have seen.

Here are some nice items that were for sale some time ago this year. I took part in the auction but for me the bids were going to high. Nevertheless very nice wannahaves, but for me not really a must.

Two Ericofons signed by Gösta Thames (1916 – 2006), the leader of the design team of the Ericofon. I am not sure when the phones were signed, but I understood they were signed by him to raise funds for a Swedish telephone collectors club.

This week I was able to get 2 new phones. With these 2 new phones I should have reached the the number of 90 unique models in my collection. Another milestone. However… back on 89 again. 🙁

Not sure if I will ever reach the magical 100 but of course that would be something special… Most friends think I am crazy. It is getting a bit complex now to get models I do not have yet, but I have said that before ;-). It is so strange that this year I got 5 new phones. That didn’t happen the last 5 years.

The pictures in this preview may not say much but I can tell you it is a Touch Tone and a Nichco metallic. Both I did not have in my collection yet.

You can see the Touch Tone misses a part, but I have this dial plate and spring in my stock. So there is no worry on that. Both Ericofons are in pretty good shape as I could observe from the pictures. But buying online is always a risk of course.

So please come back for more information and some nice pictures soon. They are both quite photogenic. On the other hand… which Ericofon isn’t?

Update 25/10/2024:

Here’s the however part: The expected Princess Pink Touch Tone turned out to be a Petal Pink Touch Tone in the end. Today I received it and to be honest I was a bit disappointed. The revenge of the Princess was fired back on me, not on the Petal rival. Good thing is that it is in perfect shape, better than the one I already had. But… not a Princess. So I have replaced my old Petal Pink Touch Tone. After all it brings a bit of extra. And, it also came with the original box and the original technical electric schema drawing.

Still waiting for the Nichco to arrive.

Update 26/10/2024:

Here’s an update on the Nichco metallic Ericofon that I promised. It arrived today and luckily it was as I hoped it would be.

Fabulous color Purple from the series of Nichco painted metallic series. A color that is so different from the rest of the palette in the cabinet. Perfectly painted, not a single scratch 🙂

Four years ago I had the chance to buy 26 Ericofons in one sale. Most of them were complete and it was my biggest buy so far.

Last week I was able to buy another lot. It is quite a huge lot, not containing many complete Ericofons, but quite some shells, chassis, dials and a diversity of other parts. It feeds my lifetime supply of Ericofon spare parts. And of course there is the opportunity to put some complete phones together as well.

Early 2023 I got in contact with the famous General Dare (not his real name) from the United Kingdom. We met online and we have been talking about our shared passion for Ericofons in some long phone conversations. In the end we agreed that I could buy his old stock remains and last week we went to collect it all.

In the late 1990’s General Dare reworked original Ericofon shells with his own designed digital DTMF keypad/chassis. A modernized Ericofon that said goodbye to the pulses permanently. Unfortunately his business stopped after a few years. In the end of the 1990’s digitization was going very rapidly and it was hard for small companies to keep up the standards. Also the weight and balance of the General Dare Ericofons was not optimal because of the new (better) speaker and the heavy, partly metal, chassis.

So we booked a ticket for the Eurotunnel and a B&B for 2 nights and off we went for a nice weekend to the UK. It was a good excuse for a short trip, from Friday to Sunday. A drive from The Netherlands through Belgium to the north of France is only a few hours. In Calais we put the car on the train and 35 minutes later we arrived in Folkestone, UK. It is true what they say about rain and England.

On Sunday morning we visited General Dare on his farm on the English countryside. His geese were welcoming us with a lot of noise once we approached the fence. After a tour through the premises it was time to check out the “merchandise”. He had quite a large pile of Ericofon parts in a barn; 3 dirty and dusty boxes with even dustier and dirtier parts in them. Not even looked at in the past 25 years I expect. We had a bit of trouble getting it all in the trunk of the car, but with some squeezing we managed. Once all was packed we had a delicious coffee on the porch of their lovely farmhouse and had some nice conversations about a lot of things. I even learned that there was a thing called a Bug a Salt 3.0 Orange Crush 😉

Thank you for your hospitality J and S! It was a pleasure meeting you both.

This is just a part of what was there… In the top of the picture there are a few nice colors and some complete sets. But most of the lot are parts: shells, chassis, dial faces, ear-caps, finger wheels, and much, much more. So if you need anything…

Here you see 3 generations of keypads/chassis of the General Dare that I found in the lot. The one the left almost weights 400 gr. This is the most common version, either with a white or a red button (which resembles the original red button). The one in the middle is 300 gr and the version on the right only 180 gr. The keypad from the latter is very similar to the Ericofon 700. I haven’t seen many of the middle and right keypads. As said, weight and balance were some drawbacks of the General Dare version. But also rapid electronic innovations and an open market were not helping General Dare as a small enterprise.

Unfortunately J did not want to include an unopened box with an Orange BPO Ericofon inside. But I knew that already upfront so it was not a disappointment. When I saw the box, it was a bit of a Schrödinger’s cat experience. You do not know 100% sure what is in the box. If you open it you will know but then it is not unopened anymore… 🙂 Nice.

My goal with this set is to restore as many original Ericofons as possible. The first sorting already has been done the evening I arrived home with my stuff. But first I need to get me a few bottles of soap and start cleaning…

I am very happy with this lot, it was all worth the ride and a good excuse to drive to the UK for a nice weekend! And of course it was an honor to have a meet and greet with the General himself!

Update 18/10/2024:

From the load of Candle Glow shells, there were quite a few that were heavily discolored. It is very hard to get them fully back in their original color, so I decided to paint them in divers colors instead. Looks nice!

Small update early 2026. One of these sets above ended up in an erotic shop in Hamburg as decoration. 🙂 About 10 years ago I posted this funny movie.