I got a couple new to me lights in that I thought I'd share with y'all while I'm still doing a little research on them for my blog. Hope ya enjoy!
The first one is one that I showed a while back but and was finally able to purchase after much persuasion and haggling. It is a NIB 1988 6D which itself is fairly rare. I've shown a pic of the light below.
What makes this one extra rare is its odd serial number. It has the correct amount of numbers but is for an older ~1984 or so light. It also has an A on the end which I've never seen before. The first thing that came to mind was that it was an "error" light and was mis-stamped not unlike Mr. Fixer's upside down bezel mini Mag. Maglite has had very tight quality control and I've only seen a handful of error lights so that would be extremely unusual especially because in the 1992 and prior lights there were no letters in the serials so you wouldn't think one would be in the stamping set. Shown below is a shot of the serial.
I have a couple contacts from the early days of Maglite and neither of them could give me a definite answer but they did provide 2 possible explanations:
1 - The head of Maglite's sales during the early days thought this was simply an error in the stamping. He said Mag would often try out new techniques during the production process and then most of the prototype or trial lights were recycled. He said that the stamping machine may have been setup with different dies or the dies may have rolled over once they got too high and resulted in an odd number combination that slipped through Mag's quality control.
2 - A machinist at Maglite vaguely remembered hearing that lights that came back for warranty issues had their serial numbers re-used but with an A suffix if they were not repairable. This would be similar to a star note for those who collect currency. He never actually saw this happen but did hear about it. He said likely a customer or dealer returned serial number 87,325 but for whatever reason Maglite could not fix the light so it was discarded and the serial number was re-stamped on a new body and sent back to the dealer or customer or another dealer.
What's interesting is this light came from a fellow in Ohio who purchased it from a police supply store. He did not send back a prior one for a warranty issue and in fact always used his smaller 3D Mag.
If anyone has any info or theories I'd love to hear them. I'mrunning out of space so I'll psot the other light I got in a new post.
). Yup, I believe the nomenclature went something along the lines of; Bell System > New Jersey Bell > Bell Atlantic > Verizon...
