I love phones. It’s one of those collectible things, I guess, but I love them. I hate answering them, and I am not one of those people that could talk for hours on a phone, but still, I love them. I was going to do a retro office supply blog today, and I will still do one possibly next week, but today I am devoting the blog to something we can’t live without: the telephone.

Telephones have come a long way, even in my time. When I was a kid, I was excited when we got our first push button phone, and I no longer had to use the annoying rotary dial one. It always scared me; I thought I was going to get my finger stuck in it. Our first push button phone was an ugly almond phone on the kitchen wall, and it had a really long cord that we all tripped on, especially when my sister would be on it because she would pull the cord as far as it would go and talk on the patio. Navigating out of the kitchen became a limbo game.

When we got our first cordless phone, with the metal extendable antenna that always broke, I was in heaven. That’s when I spent hours on the phone with my best friend, and I could walk all over the house while we talked and not be stuck in the kitchen. That was also around the time that second lines became popular in homes, along with the advent of call waiting, and I begged for those features! My mom eventually caved because she actually wanted to use the phone as well, and it was usually glued to my ear from the time I came home from school till I went to bed.

Now, with cell phones being our predominant phone method of communication, a lot of homes have done away with the lowly land line. Gone are the days of kitchen wall phones with 20 foot cords and cordless phones with no reception because the metal antenna broke off. Collectors try to hold on for nostalgia’s sake, and buy princess phones, old-fashioned wall phones, novelty phones, and the ones I lovingly refer to as tanks – the squat, square ones that were commonly found in offices but people had them at home too. What weird items do you like to collect? Are you a retro phone lover too?