Buying flashlights as an investment

I saw in another thread that someone bought a Surefire Beast as an investment. Apart from making a couple of bucks on an Arc LSH and 4+ not long after they went out of business, I can't imagine even the beautiful custom lights maintaining their value, much less increasing it, in the long term for the same reason any other electronics based product (e.g. computers, digital cameras, etc) can't - too much improvement in too short a time.

Has anyone out there consistently made money by buying and then re-selling lights at a profit?

A better investment would be to buy shares of the manufacturers, but since most are privately owned entities, I guess that's not going to happen anytime soon.

It would be very difficult with modern flashlights for the reason you mentioned. If you were a combined flashaholic/antique hunter who bought primo vintage collector lights whenever you came across one and knew their resale market value,then yes, it could be done.

I believe most constantly loss money from buying and selling flashlights. Custom lights just keeps their value a bit better, but I don't think consumers can earn bucks out of collecting them.

The way I see it, there will always be die-hard collectors out there who will appreciate the workmanship and rarity over the brightness, but I doubt you'll earn serious bucks from this.

Usually stuff that's intentionally made to be collectable ends up being less desirable than stuff that becomes collectable on its own.

Like for comics, when they first came out, they weren't meant for collecting and now Superman #1 is like worth $100k, whereas my sh*tty Spawn #1 which I've kept for 10 years is still worth like 10 bucks.

But I had some old school skate tees that I bought for $20, wore for 10 years, even with some holes in 'em, and I sold 'em for $170 EACH. If my folks allowed me to buy more back then, or if I ran a skate shop then and had 2 trunkloads full of those tees, I would probably call that a worthy investment :naughty:

I think a certain recent incident shows that flashlights can lose their value in a HURRY. Before then, you pretty much always got out what you put in if not a little more...

Anyone have a time machine handy?

Mark

I haven't seen too many taking a hit when they sell their Arc Mania/Katokichi lights. In fact they've gone for 2-3 times their asking price in many cases. Special lights will hold or increase depending on how they are viewed. The market rules.

-LT

Some collectables should keep value for a while.




Some are just good for a while:

IMHO, the flashlights that we play with nowadays can be classified as high tech devices because of the electronics involved so like all technology, they can only depreciate since there will always be new and better things coming out.

This really is an interesting subject but I would forget about flashlights
being "investments". Before the WWW took such a foothold, things went way up in value but now with the saturation online of everything from Beanie Babies to rare coins, the internet has made the unobtainable, easily obtainable.

When CPF first came online, early lights from Mag, the genesis lights from Surefire and landmark companies like Tekna were highly sought after. With the advent of CPF and Ebay, over the years they have became commonplace. Heck, a rare Tekna dive light that would have been unobtainable just a couple of years ago, I recently purchased for $10.00!

Whatever is hot will sell and the "Larry Lights" and the "Katokichi Lights" will always have a place in our hearts here on CPF but I've seen great deals on both and have seen both sell for well under what they were first offered for. I have seen them go on auctions here on CPF for double or triple their original price but that was from very generous folks that wanted to support CPF.

The best investment lights I have ever seen, (and that was for an "eye-blink"), were the ARC's when ARC went out of business. The original ARC's sold for double or triple, (and more), of their original cost. Now that ARC is back in business, you can again pick up those old ARC's for a song.

Sure, there will always be certain lights that may become investments, but with the march of technology, what was once unobtainable at any price will soon be commonplace. As an example just look at the JIL lights. Tiny, bright, super quality and AFFORDABLE. The future of lights is extremely exciting but lights as investments has a ways to go.

I believe the answer is complicated. Some lights will always go up in value--very rare or one-off Surefires for example. I personally think that most shopmade custom flashlights or modded lights won't do much, unless they're works of art. Mass-produced, high-tech lights (SF L series, or SL Luxeons maybe?) will go down in value as higher LED tech comes out. Time-tested incans (SF Z2, Magcharger) will hold value just as good user lights.

It's an odd market. Two years ago you couldn't give away most of the lights in my collection on eBay. I wouldn't pay more than a couple dollars at the time. Now the market's gone way over realistic value, simply from a specific number of folks with too much cash running around. If just two folks lost interest the market would plummet again. But we're on a bubble now.

I see where you're coming from ....... "Darling, its not an irrational addiction/expensive hobby ...... its an investment !!!"

I think, like most things of this nature ..... there will be a huge market for early 21st century products ..... in maybe the year 2500

The question was if any one has _consistently_ made money buying (low) and selling (high) flashlights. I didn't really think this was possible in the long term due to the electronic nature of the "state of art" lights. Although, like day trading in the stock market, you can time your purchases (get lucky) and make money, as in the case of Arc lights, it seems to be the consensus that consistent returns in the long term (i.e my lifetime, not my great-great-great-grandchild's lifetime) seem unlikely.

Well I'll have to agree now that flashlights are probably not good investments, my Beast did not sell for the high price I was asking. I'm feeling embarassed and yes stupid too. I can't think of much to say in my defense except that the Beast is the ONLY flashlight I thought had a chance of being a good investment.

I hope I didn't jinx your auction. I have seen lights go for unexpectedly high prices on ebay - after Arc when out of business, the LSH-Ps were sky high and the Arc 4+ did well too. Currently, a number of KIs being auctioned on ebay have been commanding nearly double the original sale price, although I wouldn't put this in the same category since the seller put some work into them. When I saw your auction, I started thinking maybe it wasn't such a bad idea. But knowing how well used computers, cameras, etc sell gave me second thoughts. There isn't any doubt you can make money on flashlights by timing the market - you still might do nicely. I just don't think you can do it repeatedly over the course of 5 or 10 years.