deal alerts: @ ebay, all flashlights below $5

Assuming I have the seller right, and I’m pretty sure I do, 4-cn922 sent me one with an lb emitter, but solid pill, driver seems decent, switch seems nicer than others, too. Nicely finished c8.

I bought two C8s from securityingstore (http://www.ebay.com/itm/331455918001?\_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT). The best thing is that they take the standard UF brass pill, e.g., the one sell by FT. It will make a very good host for the cost (<$5).
I think they are the same as yours.

Thought that TomTop’s 18650 might turn in the vein of Hugsby’s, alas it did not, waste of money, made pictures of it, in short - plastic reflector, dirty lens, two bright blue LED’s on each side of the switch, didnt try out charging feature(bought it for slightly above 5$ with car and wall charger, without them it costs below 5:money_mouth_face:, battery tube fits my red Convoy S2+ and cheap C8 with deep reflector, came with pocket clip which scratches light easily, scratched my Convoy too, has rust to it, took it apart, surprise - LB star with probably fake XP-E, sits on a shelf.

Pictures - http://1drv.ms/1O3BVxS

Item - http://www.ebay.com/itm/171640191679

I’ve been reading this forum quite a bit today and joined. I’m curious, I read that as of earlier this year the LB knock off emitter lights began to severely outnumber the amount of genuine cree (and sometimes possibly rejected cree emitters) on the $5-10 lights on Ebay / Aliexpress. Is it pretty much impossible to find actual Cree flashlights now in this price tier? So far it’s been like looking for a needle in the haystack, some Ebay listings it’s easy to tell, most it isn’t since the Ebay sellers use fake stock photos of the light in use. Note that I’m primarily looking at 18650 battery flashlights.

Look into buying a Convoy (S series/C8). A bit more than $10, but vastly superior in every other aspect. No worrying about fake emitters.

Yeah, was looking into that, looks decent, apparently Simon is the main dealer to go to for those? I’m pretty new to all of this besides some lurking here and there. Will have to think about that one.

I was mostly glancing at the <$5 18650 lights (I extract cells from laptops from time to time) figured it might be neat to try some out and maybe modify. I noticed people tend to change out the emitter and driver with something else and just use the shell as a host.

I just skimmed through quite a few pages of Ebay(US) listings and come up with around 30ish variants of different lights at $5ish and under shipped. I would link them all but it would be a bit too cluttered / spammy. So here’s a link to a paste of them, note that there could be a few duplicates in there.

These in particular seem to be very widespread online in different knock off brands from what I’ve noticed:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/3000LM-Vander-CREE-XPE-Zoomable-Focus-Aluminum-3-Mode-LED-Flashlight-Torch-BJ-/161914559394?hash=item25b2dc1ba2:g:NWgAAOSwNphWah4T

Also ran across a ‘C8’ type.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Multi-purpose-Black-300Lm-CREE-Q5-LED-5-Mode-Bright-Flashlight-5-Output-Levels-/271860326044?hash=item3f4c235e9c:g:ZS0AAOSweW5VSCvc

I would avoid those named SkyWolfEye or Vander. Quality might be to bad to be of use. E.g. those tubular ones (“S5”) have a loose pill, very thin tubes and poor threads. Models with side switch are often not that easy to modify. You should decide if you really want a zoomable light, it sounds promising but those cheap ones have their downsides. Even if you buy it only as a host, below 5$ it’s hard to find decent quality. Those C8 with an older Cree XR-E could be worth a try. Emitter and driver swap should be easy and deliver what you want.

Yeah, I figured the zoomable thing was a gimmick, I watched a variety of youtube videos and some lights would zoom alright and some would not or made rather loud clicks when doing so. Furthermore, apparently you can leak water into the unit and kill the light when doing that, at least with the cheapies. Still it would be neat to find something semi usable / moddable, it’s a bit of a shame that I came around so late when everything is now using the ‘lattice bright’ emitter so they’re all going to have that terribly dim pale blue light I imagine.

I received it. It’s similar inside like the light that vēer bought. It has a similar driver but it takes a 16mm MCPCB and just has a lip/ledge for the MCPCB to sit on. It has a Lattice Bright emitter just as expected in a light of this price

Don’t expect to make a hot rod out of it. It’s just a cheap 14500 light that needs a Nichia on Noctigon upgrade after pressing/Arctic Silver epoxy a copper disc in there.

Was wondering if these were still available for cheap. I went back through my ebay purchases and the seller i got these from orgionally dont sale them anymore. I gave all these away and sk68’s when the tornados hit around the Dallas area recently to friends and people without power.

Hopefully someone knows!

I see some on eBay, but the claims are a bit outlandish:

One, the cheapest I could find, for $3.99, with a “1500LM CREE R5”:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1500LM-CREE-R5-LED-Mini-Flashlight-Torch-Light-Hunting-Handy-Lamp-3-Mode-AA-/391290060546

…while we know that the ones from last year were all shipped with ultra-blue LatticeBright XP-E counterfeits. Conveniently, the listing doesn’t show any photos of the emitter.

Thanks for the information, wish that we could the deals we got last year on these. Is there any other cheap ones that fill its shoes?

i just bought from xtar the wk21 for $11.10 thats 500 lumens from a real quality company.

Dont forget that its available to US buyers only.

11$ ? nicee

that’s a steal.
thanks for the head up.

Please let us know what you end up getting.

I think these may be the last of a stock with slightly different specs than the WK21 we all know.

I just got one that is pre programmed (soldered contacts) and the manual shows 400 lumens as the max output. They are waiting on a new shipment built from a new bin. Not sure when that will arrive or what the specs will be. Looking forward to it.

For the record, they handled the issue pretty well (read this as anything but a complaint please).

Just know that the great price reflects the now known issue with the stock on hand in CA.

Still a very nice little light for about $10 :slight_smile:

OK, I am new here, what was their issue with this light??

Not trolling, just a newbie/mostly lurker trying to give a heads up from my recent experience. It’s definitely my first post so I guess that might look suspicious but the timing of my purchase and the post from Ronin42 prompted me to register and share.

BTW I’m not sure what you thought was negative, I said I like the light at that price but I just would’ve liked to do my own mod. Not to mention that I was pretty charitable in my post considering my irish temper. I went back a few times and “niced” it up a little so that it didn’t come off as a rant.

I think the main problem is their English writing skills. They also seem to “recycle” their descriptions which leads to less than clear descriptions of the product on sale or on hand. Add to that a warehouse in CA but eb*y store managed out of CHN and you get all of the usual (but well intentioned) communication problems. For instance some of the WK50’s on sale right now say free shipping in the subject but 2.60 shipping in the body. There are also only pink WK50’s pictured but one or two of them have the other colors mentioned just no mention of how to select one of the other two colors.

I’m an XTAR fan, I’ve picked up some great deals from this place but going forward I’m just going under the assumption that I’m playing the Chinese lottery like with some of the others (BG, GB etc.) Hence one of the reasons for my original post, if Ronin gets an unmodded light I’m definitely going to roll the dice again at that price.

Anyway, this is much too long of a post for a closet flashaholic.
Best Regards,
SMM

Plz post links.