Every collector know that somewhere out there - along every rural road we drive, every former town dump, every former PUC or telephone supply building we pass that there is a cache of old insulators buried somewhere. Really, though, how often does one actually become unearthed?

Kyle Waters, myself and a friend of ours named Darren were fortunate enough to find one such cache after a tip from a friendly bottle collector who had done some digging within it. It took a bit of time to find the spot, but once we located it, the spot was exactly where he had described. This dump was apparently an old Bell Telephone company dump, situated along a rural road in a small ravine cut. The insulators were apparently just dumped off the side of the road into the ravine, and upon arriving we found literally hundreds of telephone insulators scattered about the ground. Most of what was exposed was already broken as it was the refuse left behind by other collectors, but upon digging into the bank a bit we began to expose large quantities of intact telephone insulators - mostly damaged, but many mint as well.

Most of what was contained within this dump were CD 102 Brookfields and Diamonds. A few olive amber type 2 Diamond pieces were mixed in, but all but one were found broken. There were many Dominion 9 and a few Dominion 16 pieces as well. Transposition insulators were also found mixed in, including CD 190/191 Diamond pieces, CD 200 No. 2 Transpositions, and CD 202 Hemingrays in Hemingray blue.

All in all about 100 ponies were brought home with us, along with 3 No. 2 transpositions (the only examples found somewhat intact of all the tramps we turned up). Nothing really amazing in the lot apart from some amber and milk in a few diamond ponies, but a lot of fun!

Oh yeah - it rained the whole 2 1/2 hours or so that we were out. You know you're having a good time when you stay in spite of the terrible weather.

This photo shows what the first couple shovel-fulls of dirt produced: ponies galore! :D :D :D

Take care!