A telephone card, calling card or phone card for short, is a small card,
usually resembling a credit card, used to pay for telephone services.
Such cards can either employ prepaid credit system or credit card style
system of credit. The exact system for payment, and the way in which the
card is used to place a phone call, depend on the overall telecommunication
system. Currently, the most common types of telephone cards involve pre-paid
credit in which the card is purchased with a specific balance, from which the
cost of calls made is deducted. Pre-paid phone cards are disposable. When the
balance is exhausted you simply buy a new card. Cards purchased online can
often be refilled. The other main type of card involves a card with a special
PIN printed on it that allows one to charge calls to a land-line telephone
account.
There are principally two core technologies for phonecards: stored-value and
remote memory.
The first public pre-paid remote memory phonecard was issued in the
United States in December, 1980 by Phone Line. As telecom industries around
the world became deregulated, remote memory cards were issued in various
countries. Remote memory phonecards can be used from any tone-mode phone and
do not require special card readers. Since remote memory cards are more
accessible and have lower costs, remote memory phonecards have proliferated.
But punching in all those numbers every time a call is made is drudgery.
Remote memory phonecards are in essence text; requiring an access number,
a unique PIN and instructions. Therefore the instructions can be printed on
virtually anything, or can be delivered via e-mail or the Internet.
Phonecard collecting is known occasionally as telegery in the USA
or fusilately in the UK.
Source... Wikipedia.org
All cards collected from being discarded on the street.
This Collection is the largest of it's kind...Last update may.2013
current; pictured 55 frames containing 12 cards each and 1 frame containing 4 cards and 14 frames containing 9 cards.
see duplicates at 15 from top down an "Express Mexico"
