Belinda Beresford
People have been boring themselves silly for decades spotting trains, hunting autographs or lurking in bushes in the pursuit of rare birds.
If they’re looking for new excitement they can always join the ranks of the telametrists – phonecard collectors to you and I.
These are people who find more than simple utility in small pieces of discarded plastic. Telametrists collect any card which contains a barcode, magnetic strip or chip.
They don’t even have to be plastic. Environmentally conscious Sweden produces wooden biodegradable phone cards.
While not yet a money-making hobby on the scale of stamp collecting, telametry enthusiasts can pocket a bit of cash besides drawing hours of unbridled fun from comparing the relative merits of cards.
Dawie Schwartz, of the Phonecard Collectors Club, says the most valuable phonecards in South Africa are worth about R3 000.
These date back 13 years to when Phillips was trying to sell a phonecard system to Telkom.
At a business electronics conference, Phillips produced 2 000 cards stamped with its name and those of its partners. Most ended up in the rubbish bin. Only about 25 are still known to exist, with just 15 left in South Africa. Hence the price tag.
In a status-conscious society, the kind of phonecard tucked away in your wallet can indicate what a Very Important Person you are.
The ones with cachet are limited-edition cards commissioned from Telkom by private companies. These special cards cost about R17 000 for the minimum order of 1 000, which – against all sensible business practices – means that each card costs more than the value of the phone calls it gives in return. But that hasn’t discouraged South African Breweries and Club Med from buying them.
Telkom produced a special edition to commemorate President Nelson Mandela’s 80th birthday. A thousand of these phonecards were overprinted with gold and sold for R50, a substantial premium on their face value of R20. The resale value is unknown. No one is selling.
One phonecard enthusiast at the recent Cards Africa exibition was delighted – and horrified – to discover a gold Madiba card had been used to make a phone call and then thrown in the rubbish. A small payment to the cleaner and the happy telametrist was proud possessor of a partially used Madiba card.
There’s a fair chance very few of its brethren have been used. Most are probably in storage as momentoes or potential investment pieces.
Phonecards originated in Italy in 1974 to replace the coin-like token previously used in telephones. Made of plasticised paper, they only worked if a corner was torn off the card, thus making it easy to prevent used cards being sold on.
These original phonecards now sell for about $1 500, although rare versions can fetch more.
South Africa saw the introduction of phonecards in 1993. Recognition of the growth of telametry has been demonstrated by the release of a limited number of collectors’ cards such as the 50 cards issued by Vodacom at the Telecom 98 exhibition.
And phonecards are not the only kind to be collected. Garage cards, access cards, credit cards, even telephone simcards are all objects of desire to someone. It’s something to look at between trains.
The Phonecard Collectors Club can be contacted at (012) 347-0495