Calling all telephone cards collectors in Toronto, Canada

Eric Coutinho recently emailed me in search of Phonecard collectors in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Emailing me Eric wrote: My name is Eric Coutinho and I am an ardent used telephone card collector. I have immigrated to Toronto, Canada from Bahrain 6 years ago and have a collection of around 20,000 phone cards from around the world + duplicates. Came across your email address. If you have contacts in Toronto would appreciate if you put me in touch with them so I can add to my and their collection.

...Just to let you know when I started my collection, I used to spend a lot buying cards and also swapping them through mail. Eventually I realised I did spend a lot of money. Now that I have a huge collection of 20,000+ I really do not think it is practical to spend money. I have 10,000 duplicates and I would only be interested in exchanging these person to person for the cards I do not have in my collection.

If you live in the Toronto area and collect telephone cards Eric would love to hear from you. You can contact Eric by emailing: eric-coutinho@hotmail.com.

Pictured above - Father and son telephone card collectors - Eric and Errol.

The following is an article that appeared in a new magazine when Eric was living in Bahrain in Aug/Sept 2007:

A child started Dad on a hobby. Now, 20,000 phone cards later, Eric Coutinho has an enviable world collection.

WHEN seven-year-old Errol began to pick up telephone cards he found on the streets of Bahrain, his parents were disapproving. But the tyke began to assembly them into an album and was quite pleased with his collection.

His father, Eric Coutinho, helped his son with his modest collection of essentially 70-80 Bahrain phone cards, putting them into a business-card album. After about a year, however, the son outgrew his fledgling hobby. But Dad didn't.

The father was fascinated with the cards, the images, historical depictions, cartoons and sports teams of his basic 2,000 cards. Now six years later he has amassed a collection of some 20,000 telephone cards in 20 albums from "just about all the countries in the world" including Madagascar and the Solomon Islands.

That doesn't include an equally impressive collection of 10,000-12,000 duplicates. "I've never had any hobbies, and I think I'm probably too old to have one now," says, half-heartedly, the 55-year-old catering and hospitality staff member. Eric has lived in Bahrain 28 years.

But he's gone into phone-card collecting with a zeal that only the truly impassioned hobbyist can have for a leisurely pursuit, like stamp or coin collecting. He has 400 cards alone from Germany. But the best, he says, come from Cyprus, Greece and Thailand where scenic shots and tourist sights are depicted on both sides of the card.

While some countries, like Bahrain, may decide on a design and keep it for years, Thailand, for instance, issues new cards virtually weekly. Like stamp collectors, phone-card collectors are able to learn much about a country, its language, history, heritage and topics that the population like.

Pictured above - Father and son telephone card collectors - Eric and Errol.

Collectors, too, are equally interested in the hundreds of images that make up the popular imagination of the day. Thai cards, for example, have Mickey Mouse and other cartoon characters festooning their cards while Egypt, on the other hand, spotlights, unsurprisingly, the Sphinx. Dinosaurs are also a favourite image, particularly from South America.

"In some countries, like Thailand, the cards are so beautiful that even the casual customer hesitates to toss them away after use. The Thais often just place used cards on shelves, on the top of the fridge or a bookshelf.

When the Coutinho family holidayed in Bangkok and Phuket, Thailand, they were picking up about 500 cards a week at shops and homes where they were invited for a meal or refreshments. Nearly all cards are in the standard 5¼-by-8½-centimetre format though at least one country has rectangular cards half that size.

Cards come in two types: the "boot" version which are inserted into the public-telephone slot and a card which, when scratched, reveals a code to access the phone service. "What makes my collection unique is that I never buy or sell cards from another collector though I'm willing to trade off duplicates," Eric underlines. Just how does he acquire telephone cards from countries he's never been to? In his work, he meets scores of people per week who are off to farflung parts of the world, from Australia to South Africa, Iceland, California or Colombia.

"Oh," Eric asks a traveller offhandedly, "would you mind bringing me a few used phone cards when you return?" It may be, however, that the traveller isn't coming back for a year. Then the collector politely asks if he could have the address abroad so he could stay in contact.

That address goes into a schoolboy's notebook. To jog the memory of the traveller, he sends a greeting card at year end with a PS not to forget a phone card or two and often gets a few telephone cards in the return mail with New Year's greetings. He doesn't want any cards that might still have a credit value on them as that might smack of taking money from people.

Others return to Bahrain hardly forgetting to plonk a few cards into Eric's eager hand. The burgeoning number of collectors worldwide has spawned websites so that they can keep abreast of the latest developments and buy and sell cards.

Most phone cards are the glossy type which have the same quality as a credit card. "However, in some countries, the plastic is about as a thin as a playing card or the card could even be made of paper, like a business card," he explains.

He knows that some collectors are keen to swap duplicates but he doesn't want to sell any of his cards from his base collection. There are rare cards, too, like the one he had of Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini that inadvertently slipped away in a bad trade deal.

Now, Eric says, Iranians don't recall that there was once a phone card with the image of Khomeini on it. Gulf royals have featured on cards of the region. His wife Christine jokingly says, "He spends more time on the phone cards than he does with me."

But he insists that she's a great help, too, in expanding the collection as she works for an auditing firm where staff are sent off to overseas assignments

"Don't forget to bring back some phone cards," she tells her itinerant co-workers. One album could weigh in at about 20 kilos or more.

If another card or two comes into the collection, he begins to reshuffle the cards to get them into the country album and in a part of the album where the same or a similar topic is displayed, like tourist scenes, animals or personalities.

Eric Coutinho works meticulously on his collection and loves for others to view the collection and share in his passion.

Last updated: 27th March 2026