I wanted to know- what is your guys' opinions on taking lights from abandoned places?

My stance is this– if the place is in danger of demolition or is a known/vandalized spot, I will readily unscrew any intact lamps (usually they're tucked away in a corner, as the visible ones get smashed), but if the building is in good condition and is actually reflective of its pre-abandoned state, the light stays where it is.

If, upon further revisiting of a place, I find excessive damage and destruction, I'll likely take easy-to-reach lamps if they're of any vintage really. Not always, but usually. Cause once a spot gets noticed by the wrong crowd, its condition goes downhill fast.

Just wondering what you all think of the matter, as what us urbexers do is technically trespassing and removing lamps is technically stealing. I think it's more of a moral thing, you know?

My collection started from taking open fluorescents and incandescents from abandoned buildings. They are also a big source of spare lamps. I have found many good lamps like coloured incandescents and SBMVs from there.I consider it as preserving the lamps, as usually they demolish the building along with the lights.

Just take them. Anything not LED is never gonna be reused anyway, even if somehow the building's fate is restoration/refurbishment rather than demolition.

Only when something is a recognized or de facto monument (like the abandoned railway station in a belgian village in the Ardennes- all tubes are gone but fixtures are almost all still there on the platforms) you should let them be. In the case of the railway station, i think it would be a nice idea to actually put a few tubes back into the fixtures and hide a little battery backed PV setup somewhere, turning on a couple of them at night.

I feel that as long as the building has been abandoned for a few years and has fallen into a state of disrepair you can take what you want.

Speaking of abandoned lights, there's a stockpile yard full of gravel used for road building located in an industrial area here, there are also new streetlight poles stored there too. One day when I drove past, I noticed an older fixture poking up from the back! I went around to the other side and discovered no fewer than 20 Sylvania (eclatec) elipt fixtures and Multipole brand poles from the City centre! I also found 2 other types of fixtures, of which there were only one of each. The first one was a Rexel Optispan e27 150w mh which is a rare variant of a common fixture, the other one was a Thorn (Europhane) Lemnis, a rare imported French fixture fitted with a compact 150w mh lamp and local gear. These lights were both attached to their brackets when I found them and were likely from the same pole due to the Lemnis being used for pedestrian lighting and the Optispan being used for road lighting in the only installation of them here in Canberra. These had been there for over 5 years according to Google earth pro.

Needless to say, I took the Optispan off the 3m bracket and took it home, later coming back for the Lemnis. The Lemnis is a true maze to remove from the bracket, first you need to remove the top cover of the bracket, next you need to loosen the bolts holding the light on (with great difficulty if you only have a spanner because of the minuscule opening). Next when the bolts jam (because they just have to). So you need to open the incredibly spikey gfrp door, which has inch thick glass (it's as heavy as it sounds). Then remove the GLASS reflector (also heavy) and then free the bolts. Anyway, I just took the whole thing (bracket and all) because I couldn't be bothered doing all this at 10:00pm in the dark.

If anyone wants to look at an installation of them, look on google maps at Narellan St, Civic, Canberra, ACT, Australia.

Thanks for listening to my Ted talk.

Tom, that's honestly where I fall also. Cool to hear your perspective.

Also, the reason why I asked this question in the first place is because my best friend and I explored a perfectly-preserved abandoned restaurant at around midnight last night. The door was held shut by a cinder block, so we just walked on in. There wasn't a single thing broken or vandalized– everything was left exactly where it was when the last owners closed up shop 10 years ago, "rare" lamps or not.

One thing that was cool though was probably the fact that a good portion of the restaurant building (primarily the upstairs areas) were gutted for refurbishment. We found a blueprint (which I only took photos of, of course) whose draft date was June 2024. It was weird because the new owners wanted to open sometime in 2024 (their temporary paper sign said opening 2024) but it seemed like they got to the gutting phase and simply gave up or ran out of money. It was especially cool to see because of how easy it was to get into the building, and how good of a condition it still is in, even without running power or water in the building.
Therefore, when I saw some F20T12 UV lamps at arm's length, I didn't even think to take them. BR30 incandescents neatly stacked on the counter in a gutted room? I left them in their place. I literally had no desire to take anything except for a crumpled-looking "ordering sheet" / brochure for the PREVIOUS restaurant that had gone out of business in something like 2005, which was crumpled in a random container inside of the attic. It was a place my parents used to frequent, so I grabbed it for nostalgia purposes. Everything else though? Exactly how it was when I walked in there originally.

Wow, that's so cool! I'm having a bit of trouble thinking of abandoned buildings nearby. Certainly some empty ones after the tenants moved out, but those open back up after a few years. We had an old road for busses only which was a shortcut from a main road to a bus interchange, however after the interchange fell into disrepair it was subsequently demolished. The road went past a Westfield mall, and when the bus road closed they did a big expansion of their building for extra parking and shops.

The now shorter road now sat abandoned for about 12 years, in that time I used to ride my bike there and explore a huge gutter (4ft deep, 3 ft wide) beside it finding all sorts of things. One day, long before being into lights I found a rather large bracket and Optispec missing its bowl! I obviously didn't think to take it, and as soon as I wanted a streetlight of my own, I was kicking myself for not taking it (when I found it, there were still thousands on the roads since this was before the led upgrade, not that I knew that then). Funny enough, only a few months later I found myself an Optispec from the local college (years 11 and 12 here).

The remaining section of bus road was eventually turned into a walking track/bike path. It lead from a busy road with a footpath going to a park to Westfield. I haven't actually seen many use it though since it's in a completely useless location!

 "Abandoned or not , get caught and you're still going to jail !  My friend's place in Norther Maine has sat empty for at least  45 years . The local cops and border patrol have all been told " If you see someone on the property , ARREST THEM !"

 Nothing is truly abandoned . Someone , somewhere , owns said property.

Yeah, all properties have an owner. As much as it stinks that there’s often really cool stuff there that is unfortunately in the hands of people who don’t care about it. That’s what’s frustrating is there’s nothing you can really go about it.

 My friend's place will get completed et some point .

Yeah, all properties have an owner. As much as it stinks that there’s often really cool stuff there that is unfortunately in the hands of people who don’t care about it. That’s what’s frustrating is there’s nothing you can really go about it.

Technically, trash on the street has an owner. It is owned by the person who littered, until the city's service picks it up.
For me, it's the same with abandoned buildings in disrepair. If a building's left on usable ground for years or decades, it's littering imho. Buildable ground is expensive enough as it is in urban areas. Use it or lose it.
Cars also get towed if you allow them to get covered in moss and sit on 4 flat tires, even if you keep filling up the meter.

If something is perfectly preserved and there are no indications that it will be demolished or gutted, leave it be of course. If a nicely preserved building with all original equipment is gonna be gutted regardless of its condition, don't feel bad in taking old stuff that would otherwise be destroyed. If anything you're saving the owner money by taking stuff for free that they'd otherwise have to pay for to get removed.

In my area, owners actually encourage to take their old goods and appliances, as it is easier to give away than find a suitable disposal site. That's how I got over 10 almost new fluorescent battens and a steady stock of incandescents.

"Abandoned or not , get caught and you're still going to jail !  My friend's place in Norther Maine has sat empty for at least  45 years . The local cops and border patrol have all been told " If you see someone on the property , ARREST THEM !"

 Nothing is truly abandoned . Someone , somewhere , owns said property.

This is true, but I will say some properties are much more secured (and therefore cared about) than others.
There was a Christian Fellowship ("Knights of Columbus") center around here, which was abandoned due to an issue with the liquor license and its ability to be used to cater guests. Such a stupid reason... though, the power was and still is on, all of the exterior floodlights are powered 24/7, as are some interior lights. Ironic, because the roof is caving in and the first floor looks like an indoor swamp. Lo and behold though, there is an active alarm system just inside the door with a menacing little message stating, "Enter Code to Disarm" and a glaring red LED. Keep in mind that said door was cracked in at least four separate places- one more hit and the vandals would've gotten in. I think they too noticed the armed alarm system and ran faaaaar away. Maybe it even went off on them.

I would definitely say that the easiest buildings to get into are always the ones without power. If it's a known spot, don't even bother going– it'll very likely have motion detectors and deer cams all around which, when triggered, will notify authorities immediately. My kind of place is one in the middle of the rural countryside, preferably a small business or a commercial property. I don't really like abandoned houses (for the reasons WideLite mentioned) and also because they feel so much more personable inside. Like as if the person trespassing should not be able to see so deeply into someone's life- their bills, bday cards on the fridge, etc.

I'm also not a very ballsy kind of guy. I go with my best friend, who grew up in the middle of nowhere on 25 acres of land, so he isn't really afraid of anything. To me, danger is danger and I can't really scope out the "levels" of danger present from just a cursory glance inside.