Pagers are an integral part of the public safety field, they are used to alert firefighters, EMS personnel, and police officers to emergency calls. Often, a volunteer or small department's budget will limit the amount of pagers they can purchase and issue. Often causing members to search for and buy their own. Ebay is a great place to buy your own pager, sell surplus for your department, or buy some for your department. There are a lot of experienced sellers, who can provide a full setup with pagers, and even offer repair, replacement parts, and accessories.

The most popular manufacturer or public safety pagers is Motorola Inc. Their Minitor (yes that's how it is spelled) series is the most versitile, and the longest running series of any radio receiver ever made by any company. Some other manufacturers you may run in to are Shinwa, Swissphone, Apollo, U.S. Alert, and Plectron.

Plectron was Motorola's predecessor, and is no longer in business, but they were among the first to develop an alert radio that decoded audible tones. Plectron pagers and base receivers are valued collectors items, and very rare on ebay, with an average of only 5-10 listins under the search term "Plectron" per week. With parts and centers to cervice them few and far between, as well as the age of the units, purchasing a Plectron pager for active service is impractical, though inexpensive.

Shinwa is another rarely seen manufacturer, and also one that no longer produces public safety pagers. Shinwa pagers and accessories can still be found on Ebay, with an average of 5 listings per week. The Shinwa Checkmate series pager was very similar to the Motorola Minitor pagers, and worked on many of the same electrical principles and similar designs. There are still radio shops around that service them, and the Checkmate series ran on one AA Alkaline or Rechargeable battery. If you can find one that is in working order, and already has information similar or identical to that of your department installed, a Shinwa Checkmate would be a good, low cost purchase that would provide you with at least a few years of reliable service.

Swissphone and Apollo are two Manufacturers that have emerged in the last 5 years to challenge Motorola. I have no experience with Apollo pagers, but you wont find any used ones on Ebay, if you are looking to purchase a brand new pager Apollo VP100 and VP200 pagers are almost $150 cheaper than a Minitor 5 pager of the same specifications.

Swissphone makes a great unit, called the RE629. This model of pager is their only tone and voice model and is quite a commendable unit. The RE629 has no knobs, only two buttons on top control the unit. It has a durable, completely sealed plastic case, and it boasts a plastic speaker, to prevent water damage. The unit activates as soon as a battery is placed in it, and cannot be turned off unless the battery is taken out, or the battery dies, so you'll never miss a call for any reason. The RE629 has a massive list of features, the best being the digital display. This display has a user resettable clock, and displays the current operating mode. When a call comes in, the display will actually tell you what tone it is, fire, ems, whatever you choose to have each set called, and it also starts an alarm timer that starts at zero and counts up seconds and minutes, and even hours if necessary from the last tone, so if you miss a call you can tell how long ago it was. In the stored voice model, when you replay a call, the display alternates between the call designation (fire, ems, etc) and the time of the alarm, which is helpful for paperwork. Their customer service is also quite commendable, with many dealers offering a free 30-day trial of the pager. At a static price of $379 no matter how many channels, or programming options, the Swissphone RE629 also beats the Minitor 5 in the price area, costing a surprising $200 less than a 2-channel Minitor 5 pager with stored voice, I used a demo of this pager for 30-days in active duty on my fire department, and I was impressed by the quality and versatility of these units. I was extremely pleased and I would recommend that this be the choice of anyone looking for a brand new pager that will last a long time, and come with incredible features.

Motorola Inc. made the most advances in pagers, with many popluar models like the PageBoy, which was the first pager ever to feature a vibrate alert. Their current model is the Minitor 5, a ridiculously expensive, rather large, yet still competent and impressive. Motorola boasts the best service and accessories with their pagers, designing an entire interchangeable alerting system, that can even be used in a firehouse to wake up the members and turn on lights. Every model of the Minitor series is very popular, durable, and useful. Selecting a Minitor pager presents you with a wide world of options, with nearly 150 listings per week. Each model presents its own advantages and limitations, most only pertaining to programming. The Minitor 1 and 2 required physical alterations to hardware to change the operating frequency and tones, whereas the Minitor 3, 4, and 5 are all computer programmable, and very inexpensive to change the programming information, with some limitations still in place.

There are some things to find out and keep track of when you are looking to buy a pager, and there are a few important questions you should try to answer by reading a listing, or by asking the item seller.

The most important is the frequency that your fire department or agency is dispatched on, an officer will know this information, and so will many members who will have radio scanners in their homes or vehicles. The next information you will need is what tones or groups of tones your fire department uses. These are what will allow the pager to alert you audibly or by vibrating, and depending on your department, you may have one single tone, or three to four sets of tones, that activate specific groups of pagers to alert specific personnel. While allowing others to remain asleep or unbothered. Once you have this information, the next thing to do is shop. You can find features like call playback, multiple channels and amplified chargers, as well as different colors. It is best to make your first purchase through an experienced buyer who has an Ebay store, they will be able to best help you get the correct unit, private sellers may not know all of the information that you need to to get the right pager.