[neilv]

Seems like it could be stock for a nice little retirement side business (maybe for someone closer to 65 than to 90), hand-refurbishing old phones, and slowly trickling them out for sale on eBay and elsewhere, for premium prices.

A complication is that they have so much stock, you'd need to get (road-worthy) transportation to wherever you arranged storage accessible to you.

Maybe the collection could be parted out to multiple buyers, to make some of the higher-value lots sell more easily? For example, separate buyers for the lots of wood, candlestick, and novelty phones, then another buyer pays for right to pick over the remainder for 2 weeks, then maybe it's still worthwhile for an area scrap yard to haul away all remaining stock/trailers/fixtures for free?

[RetroTechie]

If selling individual phones becomes too cumbersome (due to this couple's age, cost of storage space etc), then the obvious fix would be to sell bigger lots.

Some people will see a market niche in it (existing or not), and bet some $ on that to start a little side business.

Bigger lots + whatever pricing makes it move.