Saturday, March 12, 2011, 12:17 a.m. — It’s been a very interesting week to be watching eBay; actually, its been an interesting month or so. There are a couple of eBay sellers who are liquidating key collections of Silent Keys. I’ve bid on a few of these, but I’ve been outbid by collectors who have deeper pockets.
There have been some very interesting keys, some of which I’ve never seen before. Here’s a quick rundown of the keys that had me salivating at my monitor.
AMERICAN TELE-KEY. There are few CW keys as simple as the American Tele-Key — 
its a sideswiper, with a springy lever with two contacts on each side. These sold during the 1930s and 40s. I have to wonder how easy these were to use, given the fact the key didn’t look very heavy; I have a sideswiper that was built on a bakelite base with brass hardware, and it must be held with one hand to keep it from moving when used.
The American Tele-Key is a fairly rare key on eBay; its been years since I saw the last one pass through eBay. This one sold for a cool $371. The key was in mint condition, and judging from the photos, it was a museum quality piece (important if you have a key museum, hi!).
VICTOR X-RAY CORP. BUG. This key is a first for me; I haven’t seen this one on any of the key collector’s websites I visit! In the years I’ve been interested in bugs, there aren’t many I haven’t at least heard of.
The Victor bug looked familiar to me when I saw it; then I recognized it — the key is nearly identical to the Electr0-Bug manufactured by the Electro Manufacturing Co. of San Francisco. The Victor key shares its pendulum style; it also has its terminal screws spaced far apart on the base just like the Electro-Bug. Actually, the Victor is more akin to the Electr0-Bug Jr.; the Electro-Bug has a magnetic coil in a box mounted on the base of the key. The “Jr.” was the same key without the magentic coil.
The differences between the Electro-Bug Jr. and the Victor are limited mostly to the “T” pivot frame; the main upright portion of the Electro-Bug main pivot frame is more square in shape; the Victor is not — in fact, it is nearly identical to the pivot frame on the “T” bar Les Logan Speed-X keys.
The Victor X-Ray bug has a nice name tag with serial number riveted to the base. All-in-all, it looks like a nice key. It’s certainly a new one on me!
The Victor X-Ray bug sold for $306 — too rich for my blood, though I would love to have sniped it.
MECOGRAPH MODEL 3 RIGHT-ANGLE BUG. Mecograph, a Cleveland, Ohio-based key manufacturer, is part-and-parcel to the history — and success — of Horace G. Martin’s fledgling Vibroplex bug. The company was first to market with a vibrating-arm key; in fact, its widely believed that Martin got the idea for the Vibroplex vibrating arm from seeing the Mecograph version.
W.O. Coffe, designer of the Mecograph, and Martin had both applied for patents for their keys, both receiving them within months of each other. Martin’s company sued Coffe for patent infringement over the Mecograph Model 3, and won. Coffe appealled, and the case wound its way through the court system. In the wake of the lawsuit, Mecograph redesigned the action of the key and released Mecograph No. 5, a right-angle bug that did not infringe on Martin’s patent. Mecograph had a couple of inline bugs, one of which it called the Premiere model. After losing the fight with Vibroplex, Coffe sold Mecograph; with in a few years, Mecograph was purchased by Vibroplex.
Some of Mecograph’s later keys had a very distinctive tiger-striped paint job on the base. Vibroplex operated the company for a short time before closing it. In the interim, there were some Vibroplex keys manufactured with a base painted in the Mecograph tiger-striped paint scheme — rare bugs indeed!
This Mecograph No. 3 sold for $204 — a pretty good deal, even in the rusty shape of the key. Versions of this key in decent shape typically sell for much more … which explains why I don’t have one in my collection.
-30-