Daniel Peddie, 34, told the Toronto Sun he paid $350 for the large wooden box with a side hand crank, two bells and a mouthpiece on the front and a separate earpiece horn hanging on the side.

After buying it, he looked inside and found a patent renewal for the model with telephone inventor Bell's name on it. Also inside, he found an 1879 Toronto Telephone Dispatch Co. book listing 35 people and instructions for building rural telephone lines.

Peddie said the phone is now in a downtown safety deposit box as he searches for someone to authenticate the phone's history.

Bell was born in Scotland and conducted his earliest work on phones in Brantford, Ontario, 80 miles west of Toronto. He died at a family estate in the province of Nova Scotia in 1922.