Vintage telephone books or directories can be an eBay, sub-niche income stream, if you know which ones offer the most profit potential. For our purposes, we are going to break them down into three smaller eBay niches.
The first group includes telephone books from 1970 to date. For the most part, these have no real collector base, and have little or no value.
The second group are those telephone books from prior to 1950. These have had a collector following for several years and, because of this, it’s difficult to find them at a price that allows you to make a decent profit.
When you find them at flea markets it’s likely the dealer is knowledgeable enough to know what they are worth. At auction sales, there are likely at least one or two knowledgeable dealers present who will drive the final price up.
When one does show up at a garage sale it’s usually either quickly snapped up by one of the first people into the garage or it has a hefty price on it because it “looks old”.
The telephone books we are interested in are those that fall in-between these two groups…from the mid 1950s to the mid to late 1960s. More specifically, telephone books from this era with illustrated covers.
The market for these is fueled by a small, but growing, group of collectors either interested in telephone books specifically or are interested primarily in telephones but collect these as a related collectible and by a growing group of genealogists.
There are a couple things that seem to add value to this eBay niche.
- Illustrated covers with drawn illustrations usually bring higher prices than photographic covers.
- Have illustrations of children or women in the home.
- Ones from part of the Bell system, with Southern Bell seemingly the best.
This should be obvious, but DO NOT BUY examples that:
- Have stained covers
- Have covers people have doodled on
- Have torn covers or torn or missing pages
When you find them you can usually buy them for 50 cents or less each. I wouldn’t recommend that you pay more than $4 or $5 each unless you have good reason to think they will bring $40 or more.
I recommend the eBay category of collectibles>advertising>communication and utilities>telephones. This category generally seems to bring slightly higher prices.
Be sure you include the year, the name of the town, the word “Bell” and both telephone book & directory in your auction headline.
Most of these will sell in the $15 to $40 range with a few closing in on three figures. There will also be some that don’t sell, but as long as you don’t get carried away with what you pay for them the ones that sell will more than make
up for what you paid for the few that don’t.
You won’t find these very often but when you do you will likely have the opportunity to buy a bunch of them. This is because they are often offered by pack rats and they are probably getting rid of every telephone book they’ve ever owned.
Telephone books from this era are definitely worth picking up when you find them if the price is right.
One final note - Don’t entirely forget about the pre-1950 telephone books. If you have an opportunity to buy one for $5 or less, grab it. You should do quite nicely with it as well!
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