TeleCard History

The invention of the calling card was made in 1975 in Italy by the company SIDA. The first prepaid phone card was launched in early 1976 with the main goal of combating vandalism of public telephones, and the new prepaid phones were installed in the Villa Borghese district of Rome. The first cards that worked were magnetic like bank cards, only they were very thin. The countries that followed Italy in the use of calling cards were Austria, Sweden, France and the United Kingdom. In 1984 the first chip in a calling card was released in France. They came to Greece late with the abolition of coin acceptors and their replacement by card acceptors in the early 1990s.  OTE issued the first Greek calling card in 1992 in 30,000 copies and depicted the sixteen-pointed star of Vergina, which today has a collectible value. Previous tests without chips but magnetic. They were released in three categories depending on the amount that the buyer wanted to spend on the 100 units, the 500 units and the 1000 units. Also for the registered collectors, OTE circulated some phone cards every year which were not put into public circulation. From 1992 until today, OTE put into circulation many phone cards, which also acquired collectible value. The collectible value of a calling card is determined by a number of parameters, the most important of which is the number of copies it has been issued, the so-called circulation. That is, the fewer copies it has been issued, the greater its value. Also another element is any typographical, spelling or other errors that occurred during the production of the calling card. The fact is that the value of each calling card, apart from its age and the other parameters we analyzed above, is determined by the informal law of supply and demand. But apart from the collectible value, the calling card and the piece of advertisements that were revenue for the Organization, was for the ordinary user a small temple of knowledge since from time to time he had captured thematic units from mythology, the history of Greece, from antiquity, exhibits from various museums throughout Greece, even landscapes and areas from all over Greece that made you trips for a few seconds with the mind and you to these areas.