Recently stumbled on a few posts on here discussing said matter and found a ukraine website with a bunch of bulbs (prom.ua) If I did happen to want to buy any bulbs from there is there any easy way to import them from that country to the UK?

Why not to try? I very much doubt UK customs will look for a single incandescent lamp, that would be stupid. However, you have to remember there is an active war here, unfortunately. So postal services may be unreliable/unpredictable. Still for a single lamp not much a problem.

Hello
 I thought about the same thing, There is a lamps shop in Kyiv that sells a lots of soviet era lamps, also some special lamps like 10kW studio lamps and other scientific lamps. I took some lamps out but there is the language barrier and i don't seem to explain that the lamps need to be sent to a private address in Germany. I always wanted to do road trips to the east. this year Lithuania (and maybe other baltic states) as a start. Sadly the range towards the east has been limited to say the least.
Generally speaking the prices for soviet made lamps rose drastically and the marked was drastically cut, making finding these lamps even more difficult.

best regards,

Alex

Why not to try? I very much doubt UK customs will look for a single incandescent lamp, that would be stupid. However, you have to remember there is an active war here, unfortunately. So postal services may be unreliable/unpredictable. Still for a single lamp not much a problem.

Would I need to use some sort of shipping forwarder or something else?

I doubt it. Find the seller, pay it. Ask him to put special purpose lamps and gift on the box and thats it.

hmm alright, thank you so much. Will try to buy some later

Stuff that idea with the ukrainian bulbs, is there anyway to get a hold of some pearl tungsram 60w bulbs at all? Also what countries still have an excess of incandescent bulbs?

Recently stumbled on a few posts on here discussing said matter and found a ukraine website with a bunch of bulbs (prom.ua) If I did happen to want to buy any bulbs from there is there any easy way to import them from that country to the UK?

If you want Japanese incandescent lamps, you can try www.jauce.com or https://jp.mercari.com/

For North American incandescent lamps, you could try www.eBay.com as well.

You can also try other European versions of eBay to source incandescent lamps from other European countries as well.

If you have problems with getting lamps shipped over to the UK, you could always try a forwarding service such as www.shippn.com or www.grabr.io, but I have never successfully used those forwarders. One of my biggest challenges with getting foreign lamps shipped is looking for reliable forwarders that can ship from Latin American countries, southeast Asian countries, Middle Eastern countries, and African countries.

It is very important to note that in North America and Japan, and some Latin American countries, you will find that most incandescent lamps over there require significantly lower mains voltages compared to your standard domestic British lamps due to their low domestic mains voltages ranging between 100v and 127v. If you want to safely operate them in Britain, you could use a step down transformer (including those intended for construction sites), wire a pair of identical lamps in series off of a domestic outlet, or even connect them to a shaver outlet if you have any at your house.

Thank you so much for the links to the forwarders will definetely have a look at those, currently looking at european bulbs from poland at the moment so I wont be having any issues with voltages etc. Take care.

The most useful tool any lighting collector could possibly acquire is a decent Variac. a 3kVA one will allow most incandescent lamps up to 3000W (in the UK) to be lit, and you can wind up the voltage gradually so the filament is not subjected to the shock of suddenly getting full- or even over-voltage.

Yeah, I try to light any of my higher wattage incandescent lamps (500w and above) using a variac instead of cold starting it directly on the mains. For those of you in the UK or any 240v country, a variac is handy for running foreign lamps too. In 120v countries a beefy step up transformer is also a good buy in case you want to run 240v lamps. I have a 2kVA step up transformer that should run most 240v loads.

I have a 1.5Va variac I got for free. Luckily. They're pretty expensive.

If you're comfortable with wiring, getting a loose variac, sticking it in a enclosure, and wiring it up would probably be the cheapest way to get a decent quality US made unit. The loose ones typically sell for cheaper compared to the bench top ones with a cord and plug.

Another option is to pull the variac from a piece of equipment being decommissioned or an assembly and then wire it up yourself.

Hi All,

Never got around to ordering the ones from Ukraine, but found an ebay seller with bloody hundreds of incandescent bulbs.

I would like to purchase 200-300 of them from him (Poland), would I encounter any issues with customs etc, do I have to specify the seller to write "gift"/"rough service"/"Not intended for home use" etc?

Or would this go through smoothly and I would receive the items without them being seized?

Thanks,
Ethan

I ordered some GM counter tubes during the war in Ukraine. No issues with them getting here. No guarantee of course, but their mail system still works.