Party Vibe

if it makes DTMF tones (bleeps instead of clicks when you dial) the frog phone is likely to be more recent (1980s onwards).

its still collectable and even 1990s models go for $80 in USA shops.

a DTMF phone wasn’t much use in Britain until the late 80s/early 1990s as we were very late in converting our phone network to digital (as thatcho was too busy selling it off and therefore starved it of investment)

there were DTMF phones in foreign nations from the 1960s/70s onwards but they were physically larger as the tone generation circuitry wasn’t on small microchips back then.

this could also be due to your telephone wiring in the house and if it was an American dodgy import not correctly wired to a BT socket

had a quick look and it is the US/Chinese design so it should work on just 2 wires to ring so if its not working its more likely to have an internal wiring fault

most of these Chinese phones use a standard “phone on a chip” type circuit. it may be repairable if you have some basic soldering/electronics knowledge and can replace the tone/pulse switch.

the more expensive one is a Post Office/British Telecom TSR1001 for dial or a TSR8021 for pushbutton. I think these are rare and collectors items as they were classed as BT property and were fucking expensive to rent for what they actually were (just a bog standard Plessey set!)

http://www.britishtelephones.com/tsr1001.htm
http://www.britishtelephones.com/tsr8021.htm