One thing I’m guilty of is the compulsive “need” to get more’n one of each, so I have a “spare” (or two, or three) in case my main one busts. I hate having an orphan that doesn’t work, and couldn’t even transplant spare parts to get another to work.
So, of course, I got 2 L2s that saw maybe 5min and 30sec of action. The latter to just make sure it worked, the other, for, well, playing around when I wanted to see how much more “reach” it could get over those in my C8 army.
Quark 2AA-Xes, a pair. Didn’t know at the time that as with most lights that eat alkaleaks, their max brightness gets lower, and lower, and lower, ’til “turbo” is about what “high” is, then when “turbo” and “high” is just about what “medium” is, and so on. That ended up pissing me off, ’cause unless I’d burn down alkaleaks ’til it’s pretty much moonlight-only, I end up wasting cells with lots of oomf still left in ’em. And I’m not about to dump cells with 70% still left on the clock. So after a few weeks of wearing #1 religiously, I retired it in favor of a ’502 which I’ve been EDCing pretty much forever, ’til just recently. 1-mode, rock-reliable, constant output for most of the cell’s SOC, what’s not to love?
And those Quarks were 78bux each, discontinued, for a stinking AA light, plus a 20buk shorty tube so that if I could get over the friggin’ green beam, I could use a 14500 in it. I love everything else about ’em, but the AA life and greenitude… yecch. Kills it for me.
Lotta other lights I used to put into random rotation — F13, DV-S9, F1, Sofirns, Thorfires, all at one time or another — I pretty much go back to just 3-4 standbys.
All the others, I still have ’em, occasionally use ’em, but that’s only when I get the itch to look through The Collection™ and see what hasn’t seen daylight for a while.