This is one of a set of two toy telephones made by the German toy manufacturer Geobra in the 1940s. It is a perfect reproduction of an adult dial phone of the period with all the details carefully observed. There are three holes at the back, which indicates that the phones could have been connected or been linked with an exchange.

These phones have a ring mechanism that no longer works but all its parts are original including the numbers behind the dial and the telephone cord.

The company name Geobra is derived from the name of the owner of the firm - Georg Brandstatter. It became famous in the 1930s and 1940s for its toys made from sheet metal. In the 1950s the company started to make toys from plastic but by the late 1960s was finding it difficult to compete with the cheaper plastic toys being imported from the Far East and Yugoslavia. They were saved by their very clever chief designer Hans Beck who was asked to come up with a new range of toy. His brief was that it should be small, sparing in its use of plastic and in a range that could be expanded. Can you guess what he invented? It was Playmobil.