Wow! This has gotten much more attention than mine!

I'm surprised by this as well... he was an epic member with informative knowledge, and I'd see him commenting to a couple of my photos as well from
time to time. I enjoyed reading his replies and took his replies seriously. Hopefully this is temporary!

Oh wow... yep! This is something I'm usually careful about as well, zooming in on the photos and inspecting as best as I can... which is why I absolutely
HATE when sellers upload those really stupid "this is what the lamp should look like" photos, with the edited white backgrounds. I usually get screwed when
buying from those sellers, ending up receiving a lamp that isn't identical to what the photo shows... which is why I never buy from sellers who upload those kind of photos.
But yeah I've seen a lot of cases where sellers sell well used or possibly even EOL lamps. I try to avoid them at all cost as well lol... unless it's a
well known seller... like Idoovad, for example. I've seen Idoovad upload a couple used fluorescent lamps, but that seller is more than likely a lighting
enthusiast, (whom I've bought from for many years) so I trust his listings, and would gladly buy a used fluorescent lamp, MV, HPS or MH from him.

Yes they are, probably on the older side of instant start too. Yeah I just noticed if you look near the top of that socket there does seem to be another wire wrapped in something going to it, how interesting! The sockets originally tricked me into thinking these used to be F40. The bottom one was starting to get a little old though (and its lamp from 1998 was too), it had a gentle flicker sometimes to it. But these could run a long time flickering for a little bit.

Very interesting read and history 👍, thanks for posting 😎

Yeah, those are curious lamp holders.  Are these instant start?  It's probably a non-shunted socket using that wire as a jumper to shunt the contacts.

Ahh, I remember that now. It's such a shame they're not around anymore.

Also side-note, what is going on with the wiring in the bottom picture, why is the middle socket wired to itself? And the side wire holes also seem to be slightly uncommon.

I wouldn't be surprised if these have old electronic ballasts in them since it was still the first generation of ballasts.

The (E) stuck around until 2012.  I'm also surprised to see a non-Alto typical 741 lamp that late.  Usually it was the specialty phosphors that continued to be full-mercury.

Yup, it was indeed 72 watts! This ballast doesn't really have a good PF at all but I don't know why it jumps in power when a lamp is taken out.

Are you sure it's 72 watts and not 72 volt-amperes?  If it's truly 72W then the current would be around 2A at that power factor.  If it's 72VA that'd be more like 0.6A and 22W.