Steve Schwartz: One Million Phonecards and the Memory of the United States

The Collector Stories series lands in Florida, home of Steve Schwartz: a dealer since 1977, he has built an inventory of over one million phonecards and a USA reference collection destined one day for a museum.

Andrea Franzoni: Prototypes, Printing Errors and 12,000 Italian Phonecards

Our Collector Stories series continues with Andrea Franzoni, an Italian collector who for 28 years has gathered only Italian phonecards: around 12,000 pieces, with a preference for prototypes and printing errors. It all began in a hospital, in 1998.

François Fossard: A Phonecard Collection of Technologies, Orange and World SIMs

We open our Collector Stories series with François Fossard, a French collector who lives by one rule: you have to go out and find the cards. His collection spans one card per technology and country, the worldwide Orange story, and new SIMs from 295 countries.

World’s First Phonecards

What was the world’s first phonecard? Eric Schuenemann of the Phonecard Museum traces the historical evidence behind the earliest prepaid telephone cards, from the first prototypes of the 1970s to Italy’s SIP: the world’s first official public phonecard.