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Valuable Old Telephones


By Søren Black-Petersen

At the end of the 1960’s as a member of an American Association called "The Antique Telephone Collectors Society" my attention was drawn to the couple of telephone collectors, Mary and Ron Knappen. They ran a "kitchen table" business repairing and selling antique telephones some of which allegedly came from France.


Ron Knappen had made a scrapbook of thousands of pages. Printed under the simple name of "Ron’s Book", it had become a bible for identification of especially American telephones. I ordered a copy of the book and to my utter amazement I saw that the depicted French telephones looked as if they were Danish and originated from KTAS and Jydsk Telefon.

Tracing the "French" Phones
Many years later when the Internet had made the world smaller, I realized that Mary and Ron Knappen were still running their business in Wisconsin. They are now marketing on the Internet and they are still selling French telephones that are actually Danish. However, strange as it may seem they have apparently all types in stock whilst it is impossible to trace them in Denmark where they are regular museum objects.

Having gone carefully through their web-sites I decided to contact them to find out if it was really old, original Danish telephones from the early 20th century. As a result I took a plane to Minneapolis on 13th April this year and arrived in Galesville by rented car the next day. Mary Knappen who is now the director of Phoneco Inc., welcomed me with open arms and showed me around in the company which has moved to an old factory building in the middle of the town of Galesville.

Phoneco Inc., Galesville, WI, USA
The company has grown through the years. Today there are 47 employees and they have an area of 10,000 m2 distributed on 4 floors at their disposal. 80 % are storerooms whilst the rest comprises a small, compact museum with among other things 400 original telephones, and an office for 5 employees taking care of bookkeeping and receipt of orders. Besides, there is a packing room, a dispatch department, a mechanical workshop, blast cleaning, and stove-enamelling. 4 specialists are employed to repair bakelite and plastic damages and they have developed a special method for enamelling of these materials.

The storeroom was absolutely enormous. It contained ten thousands of telephones. Most of them were, of course, American, but there were old telephones from all over the world; shelves after shelves, from the basement to the attic. I nodded in recognition at unused telephones from before World War II in original boxes from Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium, and England.

Much to my surprise they still had several thousands of Danish telephones in stock. The renovation took place in small series of 25-50 pieces. The telephones are being totally dismantled and the parts are being sorted according to the treatment they need. After painting and polishing they are provided with new parts, covered wires, and re-assembled. If a customer wants to use the telephone, a modern transmission circuit and a plug outlet are installed, the so-called "re-wiring".

Mary told me that she has made agreements with companies in Taiwan. If she lacks a spare part, e.g. a microphone from 1908, she will send an original piece to Taiwan. After a month she is receiving 1,000 identical copies, so meticulously made that it is impossible to tell the difference from the original. In this way they maintain "production".

Made in China
In order to meet the demand for the Danish D-1908 telephone Phoneco is also selling plastic copies made in China. Mary still had about 20 original Ericsson "sewing machines" from 1892 in stock. They are being restored individually and cost USD 2,500 or DKK 20,000. If you cannot afford an original, different copies made in China were available at USD 98!

The company’s printed catalogue shows 422 telephone models and an even larger number of spare parts, accessories, plates, books, posters, and much more. And they are not only pictures in a catalogue. Phoneco is stocking all telephones for immediate delivery.

Phoneco has been approved by the FCC (Federal Communication Commission), the American equivalent of the Danish Telestyrelsen. They are therefore allowed to rebuild and sell telephones that can be connected to the public telephone network.

A French Horn
I felt carried back to the 60’s. It was strange to be in a workshop and storeroom with so many old Danish telephones and things that I recall from visits to KTAS and Jydsk Telefon in the old days and which I thought no longer existed; telephones and parts which we at the Telephone Museum had travelled far to get hold of in the 70’s and 80’s.

In the end Ron explained to me why the Americans call the old D-1908 apparatuses French phones. It is because the mouthpiece on the receiver looks like a French horn! Whether he meant a musical instrument or a breakfast roll is not on record. See more at Phoneco’s homepages: http://www.phonecoinc.com.


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