Collecting phone cards, calling cards or, as they are often called, telecards is America's fastest growing hobby after collecting Pokemon cards. Although phonecards as a consumer commodity are only about 25 years old they come in a mutiplicity of forms and like stamp collecting they are printable. The very fact that a phone card can have anything printed on it makes it collectable. Add to this the fact that cards are mostly printed in limited runs. This results in scarcities of each card as there are a finite number of that particular run.
Here are some of the features that a phone card collector would look for:
- Cards are made of different materials
- Plastic
- Layer thickness
- Layer Construction
- Layer material
- Paper
- Card condition
- Cards are used or unused
- Cards types
- Prepaid
- Rechargeable/Reusable
- Cards have magnetic stripes
- The position of the mag strip
- The width of the mag strip
- The material of the mag strip
- Cards have embedded chips
- Cards have different data storage systems
Card Systems include:
- Alcatel
- Anritsu
- Autelca
- Chip cards
- GPT
- GSM
- Inductive cards
- Landis & Gyr
- Magnetic cards
- Remote Memory cards
- SIDA
- Tamura
- Urmet
- Cards have different expiry systems
- Tear off corners
- Mag strips
- Blown Inductive coils
- Cards from a specific product
- Card Geometry
- Oblong
- Square
- Cutouts
- Notches
- Cards from a specific event
- Olympic Games
- Soccer World Cup
- Cards from a specific country
- USA
- Brazil
- Carribean
- Italy
- Singapore
- Japan
- Rare cards
- Early edition cards
- Comemorative editions
Phone card collecting is an exact science and with it comes all the equipment. Collecting equipment includes thingd like albums, phone card catalogues, special lighting, ante static mats and calling card cleaning equipment. Exactly like Pokemon cards,coin and stamp collecting there are collectors all around the globe who trade, swap and sell telecards.You can buy individual rare phonecards or you can bulk buy a job lot of cards from a particular country.
