Elvis Presley’s Gold Plated Graceland Telephone

From Elvis’s upstairs bedroom at Graceland. Elvis purchased Graceland in March 1957. He spent that year extensively decorating and customizing the mansion. Most of the signature "original" fixtures in the house, including high-end communication sets, were installed during this initial 1957 renovation. While the Model 500 was introduced in 1949, the specific luxury of custom gold plating on these sets reached a cultural peak for celebrities in the late 1950s. This was not a standard factory item you could order from the local Bell Telephone company. It was a standard Model 500D that underwent a high-quality, aftermarket 24-karat gold plating process—a common status symbol for high-profile figures of that era.

The 500 was the Bell System's mainstay phone for decades, first as a rotary dial and then push-button, in many colors. Like its predecessor, the WE 302, it was designed by industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss. As an improvement over the 302, the dial markings were placed outside of the fingerwheel holes for improved legibility. The slightly larger base provided room inside the 500 for an adjustable bell ringer and enhanced electronics. The more angular G1 handset design replaced the curves of the 1930s-looking F1.

The Western Electric model 500 telephone series was the standard domestic desk telephone set issued by the Bell System in North America from 1950 through the 1984 Bell System divestiture. The successor to the model 302 telephone, the model 500's modular construction compared to previous types simplified manufacture and repair and facilitated a large number of variants with added features. Touch-tone service was introduced to residential customers in 1963 with the model 1500 telephone, which had a push-button pad for the ten digits. The model 2500 telephone, introduced in 1968, added the * (star) and # keys.