A story shared by Phonecard Museum — written by Eric Schuenemann
For the first time since becoming Official Cultural Partners in May 2026, the Phonecard Museum has shared a brand new piece of research with the WPC Club: a deep dive into GEC Plessey GPT phonecards, written by collector and researcher Eric Schuenemann.
The timing could not be better. This year’s 50th Anniversary Commemorative Folder, “The History of Phone Card 1976-2026” (limited to 111 numbered copies), includes a specially overprinted GEC Standard Telkor card from South Africa among its four phonecards, one of the exclusive benefits available to WPC Club members.
Discover the Commemorative Folder →
Article Contents
What Being Cultural Partners Means for Our Community
Being a Cultural Partner is more than a logo exchange. For the WPC Club, it means helping bring Eric’s research to a wider audience: promoting his work across our channels, and pointing our growing international community of collectors toward an archive that took decades of collecting, contacts and patience to build.
And the Phonecard Museum is itself a perfect example of what that means. Eric’s archive may carry his name, but it has been built over many years through collaboration with fellow collectors, manufacturers and telephone companies around the world, each one contributing cards, documents and pieces of the story along the way.
That same idea, bringing people and knowledge together, has always been at the heart of the WPC Club, and it is exactly what we recognise in the Phonecard Museum. It is only by combining what different people know, comparing documents and studying together that someone moves from simply gathering phonecards to becoming a true collector.
For Eric and the Phonecard Museum, it means a direct connection to collectors from 18+ countries across five continents, all gathered around a shared passion for phonecard history.
This is just the first of what we hope will be many stories shared directly from the Phonecard Museum with our community in the months ahead.
Part 1 of the Full Story: Read the Article on Phonecard Museum
Rather than try to summarise it here, we want to send you straight to Eric’s own words and images. His new article is the product of decades of collecting, contacts and patience, drawn from a reference collection which includes: rare cards, demonstration pieces and material that few collectors anywhere have ever had the chance to see.
If you have ever wondered how a single phonecard can carry an entire piece of history inside it, this is exactly the kind of read that shows it.
Read the “GEC Plessey GPT story – Part 1” on Phonecard Museum →
Beyond this single article, the Phonecard Museum is a website well worth bookmarking, with a growing library of historical articles covering decades of phonecard and smart card history from around the world.
More to Come from This Partnership
This article is only the beginning. As our collaboration with the Phonecard Museum grows, the WPC Club will keep sharing stories like this one with our community, while supporting Eric’s work in return through promotion across our channels and editorial support for his site.
You can read more about this and our other collaborations on our Partners page. And if you would like to discover the 50th Anniversary Commemorative Folder with its GEC Standard Telkor card from South Africa, becoming a WPC Club member gives you access to it, and to everything else we are building together.
