Peter Harradine

Peter Harradine peacefully passed away on Monday 23rd March 2020. In the late 1980s Peter and Dr S.E.R Hiscocks were amongst the pioneers of the hobby in the United Kingdom to start collecting telephone cards. Between 1988 and 1993 Dr Hiscocks produced three UK telephone card catalogues and Peter Harradines' contributions were greatly appreciated and acknowledged within the latter two catalogues. At that time Peter specialised in collecting BT optical Phonecards and had a very keen interest in BT Phonecard control numbers (a unique serial number found on the reverse of each card). Peter also contributed greatly to and worked for the various published telephone card magazines, including the most popular TeleCard Collector International (TCI) and also wote the BT news for International Telephone Cards (ITC) magazine for many years in the mid 1990s. Peter was also one of three founding members of the Telephone Card Club in the UK, this club still continues today.

Pictured above - Peter Harradine (left) and friends in Prague, Czech Republic. C+lick photo for larger view.

Peter loved traveling overseas to collector fairs, ... 'TeleCard' in the Netherlands, ITC Fairs in Europe, Veonafil In Italy, S.I.T. telephone card fair in Paris, France and Sberatel fair in Prague, Czech Republic.

Peter was also a specialist and leading authority in Philippine stamps issued during World War 2. In the 1980s he authored a catalogue of Philippines stamps. Amongst prominent places, a copy of this catalogue is held In the New York Library, which was always a source of great pride to him. About 15 years ago his dream came true to visit the Philippines.

Peter even had a British Telecom Phonecard payphone installed in his house! Peter wrote: "My association with phonecard machines goes back a long way. Having roamed various parts of London, literally "walking the streets" for years, I ammassed thousands of cards, many of which (particularly the 200u cards) still had units on them, and it was a waste not to use them. So, in about 1990, I contacted BT and arranged for one of their payphone machines to be installed in the downstairs passage of my house. This eminently practical, as I had thousands of units by then, and if you actually used so many thousand units per quarter, you covered the full hire fee of the payphone AND BT then paid you (by cheque) for any extra units used. At the end of 1995 (when I asked BT to remove the machine because they were changing over to chipcards) I was actually being paid over £200 per quarter. I then started collecting chip cards, but they were never available in the same volume, and, of course, I could only use them for calls from a public booth."

In 1996 when BT optical cards were replaced by BT chip cards, Peter decided to concentrate on collecting these cards instead. Peter also had a keen interest in telephone cards from around the world. Writing in 2012, Peter said: "Luckily, for me, I had also started collecting other countries' cards, like Belgium, Italy, Luxembourg, etc. So was able to expand, but, even now, some other countries are ceasing to issue any new cards. If you decide to re-start collecting, I suggest you pick overseas telecoms and search these for cards."

Peters' passion for the hobby was incredible, with fantastic contributions over the year. He will be sorely missed by his many collector friends.

Last updated: 8th January 2024