Hobby corner:- Just a phonecard away COLLECTING USED phonecards was a hobby for the middle-aged security officer six years ago. Now finding and saving the thin pieces of plastic have been elevated to the esteem of being second nature wherever Miss Brown sees a phonecard she grabs it. In addition, the brown-eyed Virgo is never out of touch.... she buys at least one phone card a week. "I have to keep in touch with my two children in Highgate, St. Mary, and sometimes I call home in the day to check on the other three who are living with me in Succaba Gardens, Old Harbour," she told The Gleaner. For the daughter of St. Thomas, the pleasurable pastime started in 1996 when she went to make a phone call at a booth near the Old Harbour Police Station. "I had to make an emergency call and I didn't have a card. I saw a card on the ground and I took it up and realised there was $37 on it," she said. On that fated day during the era of push-in cards, she fell in love with telephone cards. Now she frequents telephone booths in search of discarded cards. She picks them up from the ground, she begs them, anything to satisfy the yen and increase her collection. "I have over 50 telephone cards right now. I used to have a lot more than that but my children take them away to make key rings. Now I keep them locked away in a drawer at home," she explained. Several types of cards grace her collection. She has Classic Cards for pre-paid cellular service, push-in cards from the dinosaur days of slot public telephones, and the current telephone cards that use numbered accounts. She even has special commemorative and limited-issue cards. Hoarding the calling device goes further than just being an addictive hobby for Miss Brown. "I want to show them to my children and grandchildren when they grow up, so they will know what different phone cards used to look like," she told The Gleaner. She does not have a telephone at home, so having regular phone cards is to be understood. Despite the number of Classic cards she has, Daisy Brown does not own a cellular phone.
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