@everyone - Are manufacturers known to have excess lamps leftover in their stock for years on end that are just waiting to be completed/shipped out? I’m starting to wonder if it’s possible that Philips had some of these lamps (possibly unetched) manufactured in the 90s or early 2000s lying around in 2010, so they just decided to etch them all real quick and sell them as a special order thing just to get rid of them. I  apologize if that theory sounds ridiculously far-fetched, but I really can’t think of another reason besides that, the mistake theory, and the foreign market theory, that these lamps would have ended up with that etch, date code, color, and being non-Alto. Unless Philips really was just making these under the hood in the late 2000s/early 2010 without so much as including them in a catalog. We may never know what the context is for this lamp.

I'm thinking either they were in a surplus store, in storage, or in Philips' storage and they wanted to get rid of them. I think most likely school storage since they leave tons of cases of lamps sitting around even though a few years ago a bunch of Polish Altos were left out next to a staircases for weeks until some people smashed them (during school hours.) I've seen F96T8s in a closet too but they don't relamp F96T8s anymore.

From what I've seen at school, I wouldn't even be that surprised seeing foreign market lamps!

Obviously I'm not sure about the whole World's Rarest fixture.

But if we're talking Polish, then it's Mesko OURZ 2250 fixtures, A-20 ORZ 5 fixtures and Elgo OUR / OUH 2x400 fixtures.

50s Polish Incandescent fixture named OB, made by A-23 Mazurskie Zakłady Near Giżycko in Wilkasy.

It is on a not-named road at the start of Brzeźniak village in Wielkopolska area. It is a public road take that intact.

@Emersyn - That’s a possibility. I wonder if they accidentally made a bunch of non-Alto F32T8/TL741s one day in 2010 and just decided to sell them off cheaper because they were incorrect. Maybe they went to some type of a surplus store and were sold off there.

You’re probably right about foreign lamps—they may not have the same order code. There are also just few countries that use F32T8s in general, besides North and Central America.

That’s alright about the photo.

It's probably Netherlands or Germany, though I guess Germany not...

I know that Trafficvisions were likely French due to the old version which was made by Mazda in 1992, named Modula.


Though Philips Originally was found in the Netherlands

The SGS203 and SGS204 originated from the Netherlands i believe...

Thats interesting how they have different date codes though

Today I found some 36w and 40w lamps branded as "Ecolink" with green sleeves. It turns out, they are just rebranded philips lamps.
Firstly, on the sleeve it says "made by Signify (formerly philips lighting)".
Secondly, the tubes are very similar to philips tubes, down to the etch layout, endcaps, and date code.



Ecolink TL 40w/54
Ecolink TL 36w/54
Philips TL 40w/54
Philips TL 36w/54

Unfortunately not, I went through my photos and found nothing. Maybe there's a possible the school district wanted a discount so Philips sold off some old stock to them? Or just low quality stock? But I think its definitely from 2010 because the lights were relamped in 2021 with authentic Alto F32T8/TL-741s and GEs.

If it were foreign, I'm not sure if would have an order code. I'm not really familiar with foreign lamps but they don't usually have order codes on them. Plus essentially all new Philips lamps have dark solid etches.