Disney fans love to collect everything Disney, from Vinylmation figures to different Magic Bands to variations of Mickey Ears to, of course, the very popular hobby of pin collecting that shows no signs of abating, even though there were predictions more than a decade ago that the market was glutted and demand would die soon.
If you live long enough, and have a variety of Disney friends who border on being more Disney fanatics than mere fans, you survive though the mania of their collecting Disney Mini Bean Bag Plush or limited-edition animation cels, as well. Those collectors were passionate about their collections and, sometimes, even got physical in their interactions with others to get what they wanted.
Disney phone cards, like these from China, were big collectables in the 1990s.
When I get asked (as I often do) how much something is worth, my standard answer is that the Disney item has no intrinsic value, despite what websites or price guides might state. It is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it. Today, Disney Mini Bean Bag Plush that were supposed to fund some collectors' retirement often fill Salvation Army and Goodwill stores around the country.
Before pins, Disney collectors rabidly collected buttons. There were publications and conventions where those items were prominently displayed and discussed as prices rose for unique examples, but they have lost much of their allure today.
One of the oddest Disney collectibles I know of were highly popular in the late 1990s, but are rarely discussed today: Disney phone cards. They are still some produced, but the demand for them is no longer as strong as it once was.
Twenty years ago, it was the fastest-growing hobby in Great Britain, and increasingly frustrating for Disney fans who struggled to obtain these foreign-made treasures (usually made in the United Kingdom, France, Japan, China, and other countries) at a reasonable price. There was even a name for the hobby of collecting phone cards: Telegery.
In addition, there were magazines like The Telecard Times and Moneycard Collector that provided collectors with price guides, news, and more. The first phone cards as we know them today appeared in Italy in 1976, in the UK in 1981, and in the USA as late as the end of 1991. It has been estimated that there are roughly 2 million to 4 million people who collect phone cards worldwide, many just casually.
Phone cards are special credit card-sized pieces of plastic with preloaded credit that can be inserted into a pay phone to be able to make a phone call. They featured colorful original art or photos on one side, often sponsored by companies like McDonalds or Coca-Cola (both teamed with Disney at various times to create art for the cards). These were all produced in limited editions, often 1,000 or less, so that helped spur the mania to get a particular card.
With the introduction of prepaid phones, these cards fell out of favor. In some ways, collecting these cards mimicked the reasons people collected stamps or trading cards. There was an obsession to try to collect them all or at least some of the more obscure cards. In truth, it was probably more of the excitement of trying to track down the treasure than actually obtaining it that infused some collectors. Disney, of course, still remains the No. 1 collectible type of phone cards by a wide margin because of the imagery.
Just like any collectible, cards can go up in value. The first AT&T card, issued in early 1992, sold for more than $1,000 dollars because of age and rarity. However, cards can also decrease in value. The Sprint Coca-Cola Monsters of the Gridiron card was once worth $45 dollars and now sells for less than $5 dollars. there are similar such horror stories about drastic drops in value.
Price for Telecards is determined by age; edition size (how many cards were printed); condition (unused mint cards are more valuable because some cards like the Italian Urmet cards required a corner must be broken off before use); attractive art (one of the reasons Disney is so valuable) and a handful of other factors including carrier (like British Telecom, AT&T, NTT Tokyo, etc. because it helps define the card, where it was produced and in use); issue price; and topic.
It was not unusual for special promotion cards to be issued without any previous announcement and disappear quickly. A special five-minute card, produced for the 1994 Official Disneyana Convention featuring the dancing thistles from Fantasia (1940), and given away free, was selling for $250 each less than a year later.
One of the first issued Disney card “sets,” Mickey – The Early Years Part I, appeared in July 1994 in New Zealand in an edition of 1,000 and sold for $125. By July 1995, the price for a set was $750.
Mickey – The Early Years Part II sold out completely prior to its issue date. On the day of its announced issue, more than 3,000 panicked calls were received wanting one of the 1,500 units. The company attempted to immediately buy back sets to satisfy some of its long time customers, but, by the end of the day, the $125 sets were selling for more than $300 dollars.
Three-hundred sets were to be allocated to the United States and 300 to Australia, but those were cut back by more than a half.
Disney felt it was leaving money on the table so some other sets had increased edition sizes that didn't dim their popularity. Event Masters/New Zealand Telecom that produced the Mickey sets also created 4,000 units of The Lion King for September 1994, 3,000 units of Snow White in February 1995 and 3,000 units of Pinocchio in May 1995 to very appreciative buyers.
In 1994, roughly $150 million in phone cards were produced. By 1995, that amount, because of the collecting mania, increased to over $1 billion worth of cards. For the most part, cards produced and sold in a country tended to match the pay telephone system in that country.
For instance, in Japan it was magnetic, but in Great Britain it was optical, and in the United States it was remote memory (which required a PIN number). Magnetic cards were the most widely used because of the now-familiar magnetic strip on the card.
The first phone card for use in the United States was a NYNEX card, which sold for $5.25 in 1991 and, less than three years later, it was considered a valuable rarity that was almost impossible to find.
Some Disney collectors tried to collect all the Disney-related cards (including the ones that were cross-sponsored by McDonalds and Coca-Cola) while others concentrated on just ones featuring Sorcerer Mickey or Tokyo Disneyland.
Early Disney phone cards were manufactured in Japan, Germany, New Zealand and Italy and were, quite frankly, made for practical use rather than a collectible treasure, resulting in it being difficult to find most of these cards in mint condition.
Disney cards featured original art, graphics from theatrical art like lobby cards and posters, photos and more. Tokyo Disneyland frequently produced collector sets to commemorate park events like their 10-year anniversary.
With the opening of each new Disney Store in Japan in the 1990s came the release of a new phone card exclusive to that location. One card pictured Mickey, Goofy, Donald and Pete attired as the Dapper Dans singing about the grand opening.
This Mickey card, produced in Japan, was one of many created for the opening of Disney Stores and commemorating milestones at Tokyo Disneyland.
A special full-color, four-card folder showcasing Tokyo Disneyland's Main Street Electrical Parade was produced in 1995, as well as a card with terrific graphics of the Star Tours attraction at Tokyo Disneyland with an image I have never seen anywhere else.
The Disney Company didn't directly produce its own cards, except for some cast member exclusives and cards for various conventions through Vista United Communications, the Walt Disney World Resort's private phone company.
A limited edition (800) phone card release was issued August 1, 1995 that resembled the WDW cast member Five Star Fanatic award card, and was given to cast members who demonstrated exemplary guest service. The card was a $7.50 denomination with prominent Vista-United logos on both sides. It was set to expire June 30, 1996.
On August 21, 1995, Vista United released 900 complimentary limited-edition $5 cards for the Technology Magic conference at Disney's Contemporary Resort Hotel, but that didn't satisfy the more than 1,600 attendees and participants, including Hewlett-Packard, AT&T, Egghead Software, and Motorola. The free phone card was used as an incentive to get vendors that Disney wanted a working relationship with to attend the conference. There was an expiration date of June 30, 1996 for the card.
Rather than these relatively unknown exclusive cards, it was the foreign produced cards that set the phone collector's heart racing. A set of 3,000 cards from Pocahontas was released from Chile, and were extremely popular with U.S. collectors. American collectors especially liked the German puzzle sets that included Beauty and the Beast, Mickey's 65th Birthday, The Jungle Book, The Lion King, and Mickey's World Tour. Unfortunately, only one German dealer was able to negotiate exclusive access to the cards which resulted in astronomical prices.
Kodak Singapore issued a four-card Mickey and Minnie set in an attractive folder in early 1995 in an edition of 5,000 that quickly shot up in price to $125. The next Singapore issue was a five-card movie set with Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Pinocchio and Alice in Wonderland, again with only 5,000 folders produced that also quickly exceeded its original price.
The news of the limited availability of these cards only sparked the collecting fever of American Disney fans further who took it as a sacred quest to obtain these items for their collections.
Australian Telecom produced some popular Disney series. The first “Disney Down Under” issue was a two-card folder of Mickey and Donald water-skiing. Ten-thousand cards were issued, which was the usual quantity produced by the company, so the price remained about $55.
The real collecting fever for these types of cards was in Japan, where it was reported that collecting phone cards greatly exceeded those people who had previously collected stamps.
For American collectors, this became a frustrating and difficult situation because most American dealers were only able to buy what was made available to them, rather than the specific cards they wished to purchase. The best cards already sold for high prices in Japan, so Japanese dealers often adamantly refused to sell to “outsiders.”
Cards from the Pacific Rim were highly prized by collectors for their quality and variety in artistic design and also showed the highest investment potential.
Some fans did not care for some of the cards created by British Telecom because they felt the optical bands on the front distracted from the overall art. However, as the century started to come to an end, both dealers and collectors re-evaluated that decision.
Phone cards, like any other collectible, need to be protected against scratches, bends, tears, fading, or any other damage that would greatly decrease their appeal and value.
Many collectors used specially produced phone card holders, plastic sleeves, and binder pages that were manufactured within archival PVC-free standards. In a standard photo album, the PVCs in the plastic will damage the cards over time. Some collectors even had pocket albums designed to carry between 25 and 100 cards. Like most artwork, phone cards need to be protected from direct sunlight and temperature extremes.
I do not know of a current site where a potential collector would be able to locate a listing or prices for the thousands of different Disney cards produced in a dozen of countries around the world.
Some companies used to sell an annual yearbook that detailed every card produced in a specific year but I have been “out of the loop” on Disney phone cards for quite some time (as I always tell people, “Nobody can know everything…especially about Disney”) so I no longer know if those are still issued or whether older editions are available.
Basically, I wrote this column for the same reason I write many of my columns. I could not find the information elsewhere and thought what little I did know should be documented and shared in the hopes that others might add to the discussion.
I certainly have no criticism of Disney fans who want to collect whatever they want to collect. Twenty years ago, I was not collecting phone cards, but had a big scrapbook where I was carefully pasting inside individual sheets of Disney Christmas wrapping paper trimmed to fit the pages.
I had noticed that there was quite a variety each year, and that each year there were new designs, and that I should try to keep samples since the paper was very disposable after excited recipients tore into it to find their holiday gift. I stopped doing that once I re-located to Florida and somewhere in a box in my storage unit is that futile attempt to try to keep a record of Disney Christmas wrapping paper.
It probably would have made more sense to collect phone cards, but part of the joy of being a Disney fan is collecting what attracts your interest at the time.
