Okay, I know that in the vernacular it never did. People who are into such things still answer the phone by saying, “It’s your nickel.” But my domestic partner (hereinafter, DP) asked about this the other day. DP is some years older than me and remembers when there was only radio, odd brands of toothpaste, etc. He wanted to know when pay phones went from 5 cents (AIEEE! there is no cent symbol on the keyboard!) to 10.
I cannot ever remember pay phones being less than a dime. I always thought that people such as my uncle who said “It’s your nickel” were making a quaint reference to an anachronism. Quite frankly, I barely remember the dime phone call (and BTW does it have anything to do with “dropping the dime”?).
Had to be sometime in the 50’s I’m thinking - definitely sometime before I was old enough to use a pay phone (in the 60’s)
Most likely well after WWII was over
(showing my age here a little bit-------I also remember nickel candy bars and nickel chewing gum and nickel cokes out of a machine-------and 10 cent comic books)
The dime pay phone kissed off in the mid-80’s as I recall. Went up to a quarter–horror of horrors–world coming to an end type of thing.
Nickel phone call was back in the 50’s as I recall.
In any event both-----“It’s your nickel” and “It’s your dime” --------had their place in time.
Never was a -----
----“It’s your quarter” -----or “It’s your 35 cents” ------or “It’s your half dollar.”----------------that I ever remember.
Inflation can kind of squish language usage at times.
I’ll disagree that it hasn’t become “your dime”. I hear that a lot more frequently than I do “it’s your nickel”, usually in the form of “Your dime, my time” or some other allegedly witty phrase. However, as to when nickel payphones disappeared, that I’ll have to leave for someone else to answer, although I do believe I read that there are actually some still in existence somewhere.
Here you go: http://www.answers.com/topic/nickel-u-s-coin
It seems a “nickel” wasn’t always worth 5 cents, but the nickel phone call completely
disappeared about 30 years ago.
I recall, and possibly used, “It’s your dime”, to answer the OP, “drop a dime” is indeed street jargon for calling the police, probably coined (oops) in the 50’s or 60’s.
The nickel pay phone disappeared in different locations at different times. I think it went to a dime in metropolitan California and New York state in the 1950’s. The 1960’s for many other states. Louisiana was the last state to change over and that was about 1979.
My mother claimed she saw a working vintage dime pay phone (the wooden kind, with seats) inside the lobby of the state capitol building in Columbia, SC in the mid-90s.
Pay phones are now 35 cents or more, and they aren’t used much, because of cell phones. However, “drop a dime” (rat somebody out to the cops) is still “drop a dime.”
A search of a general newspaper database shows the “it’s your dime” in print from about the early 1960’s, right when many phones were being changed over.
“It’s your nickel” was used a bit before that, easy to find in the 1950’s and even the late 1940’s. There was even a newspaper column called “It’s your nickel” from the late 1940’s.
It also would appear that the “it’s your nickel” may have been influenced by the price of a tune on a jukebox. Not saying it originated there. Just saying.
You can thank Sonny Liston for popularizing the phrase “It’s your dime, but my time.” That’s how he used to answer his telephone in the early 1960’s. And of course the press picked it up.
Don’t forget, the Beatles sand “If I should call you up, invest a dime” in the 60s.
Not to hijack, but Joan Jett sang “Put another dime in the jukebox baby” in the 80s. I can’t really remember jukeboxes accepting anything less than a quarter.
Pay phones in Louisianna were 5¢ in the early 70’s.
I know because I’d go there a lot and puzzle over it.
Supposedly it was due to the personal power of the Democrats in those days, who had a machine that kept some popular things from changing.
Kerckhoff Hall at UCLA (HQ of the Associated Students) has a couple of real cool old fashioned phone booths. They’re finished in panelled wood, and about three times as big as the type of glass booth seen in the old Superman TV show. When you go in and shut the door behind you, a light comes on, and there’s a seat for you. The building was built around 1930, so the booths obviously go back to that time.
Interestingly, UCLA phone numbers all begin with 825-, or “UCL”, but I’ve been told that was just a coincidence.