Collecting, preserving and sharing the history of miners’ lamps
Welcome to Old Flames
A collector’s journal from Broken Hill. New lamps, stories and finds from the market most days, written for anyone who loves mining history.
Most of what we collect is safe on a shelf. A few bits can bite when you strip, clean or post them. Advice from makers, museums and Australian agencies.
Read more about Collector safety check: asbestos, radium, live caps and old batteries →EM lamps turn up everywhere, and some get sold as rare German or French pit lamps. How to read the stamps, date the lamp and spot a copy or gift lamp.
Read more about Polish Elektrometal (EM) benzine lamps: reading the stamps and spotting the copies →A Protector GR6 with its Cortonwood pit check, a Dufrane officials’ lamp from Charleroi, a Lietz clinometer and a brass SEMOI electric lamp.
Read more about Market Watch, 3–4 November 2026: a Cortonwood GR6, a Belgian porion lamp, a Lietz clinometer and a SEMOI →Most old lamps reach us anonymous. This all-brass officials’ lamp still has its man, his certificate and 27 years at one pit.
Read more about Henry McCartney’s lamp: a Patterson B7 from Houghton Colliery →Made to get Bisbee’s miners off candles: a Justrite Little Giant with the mine’s own name cast into the side.
Read more about Lamp of the Day: Justrite “Copper Queen” carbide hand lamp, USA, 1912 →Australia’s worst mining disaster, and why a Royal Commission said safety lamps would have saved the men.
Read more about Mount Kembla, 31 July 1902: the naked lights that cost 96 lives →A few letters punched into brass tie this J.H. Naylor lamp to the Moss Hall Coal Company and the Maypole Colliery explosion of 1908.
Read more about A Naylor lamp stamped “M H C Co”, and Wigan’s worst pit disaster →A six-bar Watson Davy, a Biram’s Patent “Economy” and the Thornton Eloin: the three biggest single-lamp hammer prices we can find.
Read more about Record prices: the most expensive miners’ lamps ever sold at auction →A small brass carbide cap lamp sold in Australia around 1910. Paperwork says it was made here, but nobody knows who made it.
Read more about Lamp of the Day: the Demon Strike Light, Australia’s mystery carbide cap lamp →A South African-made Cambrian-type lamp, an Arras Type P, a NIFE electric lamp from Pelaw Main, a Casartelli dial, a Stonehouse sign and a 594-lot collection.
Read more about Market Watch, 2 November 2026: a Boksburg lamp, an Arras, a Hunter Valley NIFE and a big US auction →“A safety lamp only works if it’s used.”
