Issued: 1993
Code Number: Issued:
I930519 Maximum 50 (many unsold)
289
This is probably the rarest of all the phonecards produced by Telstra. This card was one of the first uses of the International Generic Card. It was produced for sale at a two week international surfing carnival held at China Beach, Danang, Vietnam. The carnival was the "Saigon Floating Hotel Surf Pro". Telstra OTC Australia was one of the Corporate Sponsors. The Planet Earth card was encoded with US$50.
The purpose of setting up the Vietnam cards was purely for goodwill, Telstra were never going to actually issue cards for Vietnam.
There were 150 cards produced in total with a serial number range of 28912000 to 28912149. The first 100 (28912000-28912099) were used solely for testing purposes, as the payphones were fully tested with these cards prior to leaving for the event. There were only 50 cards made available for sale in Vietnam. These had serial numbers 28912100 to 28912149. The actual number sold at US$50 each is unknown, but any unsold cards were to be returned to Telstra for destroying. Of those sold, how many were then actually used is unknown.
At the bottom of this page is an actual copy of the letter confirming the details of the cards for Vietnam.
All the first 100 testing cards and the unsold cards were supposedly destroyed, but this is not the case, as I have one of the testing cards. I have serial number 28912036, which was acquired originally by a German collector, before passing into the hands of another strong Australian prefix collector. He subsequently on-sold it to me, for which I am very grateful.
Four examples of cards from the Vietnam 50 are displayed below, plus another another test card. Anyone else who has a copy of this card, I would be grateful for a possible scan or at least a note of the serial number.
