What to do with a collection of antique telephones?
This year, I finally cancelled my landline service. Service had gotten more expensive every year, and the number of telemarketing and spam calls had risen far to high. I checked, and my provider was offering a hardware add-on that would block calls, but wanted a monthly fee to do what the provider could have done for free. The last straw came when the drop from the pole in the back yard fell, and customer service said they could fix it in "a week or so."
"CANCEL MY SERVICE NOW!", I said, about 12 times before they agreed to cancel.
I've been collecting antique phones for years. From an 1890s oak wall phone in the kitchen and a 1920s candlestick phone next to my living room chair, to a wide assortment of rotary dial phones from several different decades, I had been adding to my collection. Every one of them was connected to my landline, and there was an antique phone near everywhere I went in my house. All worked, including the oak wall phone, to which I had added a rotary dial behind the front panel to make it more usable. I had disconnected the ringers from most of the phones, just to cut down on the noise from all those telemarketing calls.
So, I still have the phones, but they are connected to a defunct landline now. I've been boxing them up as I remove them from their spots in the house. It's sad, but time moves on. Well over 100 years of history that I kept in operating condition is now useless.
I suppose I'll sell them on eBay to some phone collector who still has a landline. Me? I just switched to my smart phone, which travels with me in a pocket wherever I go. I miss the old phones, but they weren't of much use any longer. Everyone called my cell phone anyhow. It's a shame, I suppose, but technology marches on and makes thing after thing hopelessly obsolete.
Everything from the past is becoming obsolete, including my 75-year-old self, I suppose.
It's sort of sad, really.
= new reply since forum marked as read
That's what keeps my "phones" ringing with all of those "special offers!" 
(it is all we can get out in the sticks) There is not telling how many thousands of calls I have gotten. The caller will hear it ring, and ring and ring, but nobody ever answers. Of course when anyone I don't want to talk to wants my number, I am happy to give it to them. 
I have a similar problem. About three years ago, I started buying and fixing old pendulum clocks. FBI just requested to see the independent findings allegedly proving massive voter fraud I have a house full of them now and I should be selling them, but I bought them because I liked them and I don't want to sell them. My estate sale will be interesting, because clocks aren't the only thing I collect (read hoard).
