Just wondering, because when you tell someone your hobby is flashlights, they usually find that hard to understand.
My parents collected bells...even less useful than a functional flashlight, in my eyes. But there is an American Bell Association that folks belong to, it's a pretty popular hobby.
Wife's parents collected statuettes of elephants for years, their whole house was full of them. Talk about a useless hobby; but people didn't think that was weird.
So what do you think is more peciliar than collecting flashlights?
The advantage that bells, spoons, and thimbles have is that they are timeless. Collecting flashlights is like collecting computers, they are quickly made obsolete. You don’t hear people say “Hey you should see my IBM 486 DX2/66!! It was the best back in the day!”
Very interesting and useful post, but in my opinion, the best water bottle for EDC is to refill a used bottle of water: they are lightweight, free, and you can throw it away if you want. The only difference is if you want to keep cold water or hot coffee for several hours, in which case you need an isolated one.
I think the word 'collector' implies something a little strange, but to what degree varies...
I disagree that flashlights are like computers. Well...any technology is to some extent - but a 5 year old computer is almost as worthless as a 15 year old. It will be a long time before most decent lights are obsolete, since they can be upgraded. In fact, unless there's a huge change in how emitters work, or some wonderful metal alloy is discovered, they may not even be obsolete in our lifetime.
anyway...
I have a friend that collects BEER. He has several hundred (full) bottles of beer - all unique, afa the label is concerned...
He had a roomate that was an alcoholic. You can guess where that story is going. At least he got caught after a few dozen and not a few hundred.
Imagine how skunked some of those 10+ year old beers were
There's something evocative about an old fridge - must be a childhood thing.
If I had the resources, I would collect large appliances, TVs and such. My dream is to own a 6 story building filled with rooms of furniture, appliances . . . .
I think nowadays flashlights wont be obsolete very soon.
The theoretical max efficacy of leds is between 260 and 300 lumens per watt, and beyond led technology, according to physics, 1 watt is equivalent to 638 lumens.
Incan bulbs can do something like 10 to 15 lumens per watt. They are obsolete because LEDs does never burn and can be 10 times more efficient: 140 to 170 l/w, and 230 in lab conditions. If there are better leds in the future, we can swap them, but they wont be 10 times more efficient than nowadays'. Maybe 50% more.. but that's all.
If in the future there are more efficient batteries (more mAh), you can just use new ones..
The only problem would be if in the future there are (for example), much more efficient batteries that use higher voltages that nowadays drivers can not handle.
Conclusion: incan lights are cr*p, but led lights will last will be useful for a lot of years.
EDIT: Actually any "collecting" can be called strange. After mentioning shoelaces I looked over and saw my six pack holder collection. it's about 15 years old and still growing. I still have an unopened bottle of milk from 1998 that I watch to see how it changes over time.
Collecting garbage. I met a person who collected other peoples gargbage and stored it in his unit. After a number of years the refuse broke down to a liquid sludge and ate through the concrete causing structural damage to the building. The strata had to pay to clean his unit and repair the damage and guess what? He is still collecting it. A real wack job.
