Author Topic: Thomson-Houston sockets (Read 11934 times)

byronleer · « **on:** September 14, 2003, 08:58:00 pm »

I have recently lucked out and got my hands on two good old bulbs that have the Thomson-Houston base. As a matter of fact, one is similar to the one shown at Kilokats home page right now except is is a bit older. Same white base, but has a Edison label and the single type hairpin filament -16c. The other a Shelby, TH brass base, also 16c. Both have good filaments, but my problem is, where to find a TH socket?
Any clues?
Thanks group.

Yoshi · « **Reply #1 on:** September 14, 2003, 09:42:00 pm »

Hello Byronleer,

In the last year (sept. 2002 - sept. 2003), I have seen only 14 Thomson-Houston sockets sell on eBay. I made a Zip file with pictures of all of them just for you. The filename of each pic tells what it sold for, when it was sold, and in some cases who won it or who sold it (the username to the left of the price is the seller, the username to the right is the buyer). Some pictures even have the item number. Please note that in some cases there are several pics of the same socket. In these cases, the additional pics have a "-2" (or -3, -4, -5, etc.) at the end of the filename.

Download here: http://168.37.237.181/otherfiles/thsockets.zip (634 KB)

-Yoshi

byronleer · « **Reply #2 on:** September 14, 2003, 10:12:00 pm »

thanks yoshifan, you keep good records! Now that I have a couple of TH bulbs, I guess I better be watching, but I like to find things thru other sources than ebay all the time. As you know, sometimes things get a little crazy there. But the choices are nice.
This time,I was lucky to find a swap meet seller that somehow came across some nice bulbs. I have a couple of friends that have more time on there hands than I do and can attend more swap meets. They know I collect bulbs and saw some, got his phone number and we got together to see what he had and I was surprised to find that they were older, carbons, with labels and all. I got 5 of the nicest ones he had to add to the collection and make it a nice weekend!

Yoshi · « **Reply #3 on:** September 14, 2003, 11:37:00 pm »

Well, you're lucky to live in Ohio. All states East of the U.S. (especially in large cities) seem to be loaded with antique lightbulbs. Unfortunately, the place where I live is not old enough to have any valuable antique lightbulbs around, so I have bought all of my antique & vintage lightbulbs on eBay. I live too far away from East of the U.S. too. But you know, a few times I have been able to get great bulbs so cheap, I doubt they'd be any cheaper in a flea market or a garage sale. Such buys are extremely rare but they do exist. I keep my buys below $30 about 99% of the time, so you can expect not to find any 1880's lightbulbs in my collection. I have a few 1890's bulbs but most of them don't work.

If you need more "statistical eBay info" about a certain bulb or socket, just ask me

[This message has been edited by Yoshi (edited September 14, 2003).]