Up for auction is this Chicago Supply Co. oak wall telephone. This was an estate purchase and I'm not that familiar with these old phones. What I can tell you is as follows:

When you crank the handle the bells are loud and crisp. The crank mechanism works fine. Look at the pictures of the interior, I don't know if everything is there or not, but I assume you'll be able to figure it out. The ear piece and mouth piece appear to be original and appear to be in pretty good condition. The chord to the earpiece appears to be very old, I'm unsure if it is original or not. You see some kinks in it but the chord itself is not cut.

On the crank, there is a piece of the bakelit that is chipped as can be seen in the picture. It does not affect it's operation. On the oak shelf, you can see the brace on the underside is broke in half. I assume this was probably fairly common on these type phones if people rested their arm on the shelf. On the top of the shelf there is a piece of the wood that is splintered about 1 inch long. Some glue and a clamp will fix this splintered piece. As far as the broken brace, you have two options. Either find a salvaged piece from another phone or get a piece of oak and make the piece yourself. I do a lot of woodworking and trust me, this would be an easy fix. The oak appears to be a natural finish so if you duplicated the piece, you could blend it in to match perfectly. Additionally, you would not have to be that concerned about the grain of the wood on the piece as the face of the phone has two different grains of wood. You'll notice in the picture that the grain on the front has two different characteristics. That's because when this was originally made they joined two pieces of wood together with a tongue and grove joint to form the front. They weren't necessarily that concerned to insure the grain type matched perfectly. With that said, whether you salvage this piece from another phone or reconstruct it, I know it won't take much effort and you will end up with a good match.

That's about all I can offer. Please look at the pictures and bid accordingly. You can see some specks of white paint on the phone. I have done nothing to clean the phone and I suspect with a little elbow grease, any of the white paint can be removed. 

I don't think you're looking at much to get this phone up and running. I think you'll be pleased with this phone.

Please contact me with any questions. Thanks for looking and good luck bidding.

Note: due to recent problems with insurance claims on international shipments involving FED EX, we no longer ship international. Also, please do not ask us to ship via FED EX as we will not patronize that company. Sorry.