Gem-Lites

Gem-Lites were designed as an alternative to Kel-Lites for a very short period of time in the early 70s. Kel-Lite had a supply problem early on and had difficulty meeting orders due to the overwhelming popularity of their lights. As such, imitators started to pop up to take advantage of this situation. Their prime imitator was Gem-Lite. In fact they were even produced by a machine shop near San Dimas that was a supplier for Kel Lite. Their original address listed in old literature is:

GEM Products
623 W. Covina
San Dimas, CA 91773
Tel. (714) 599-1055

Most of the design was produced using identical tooling. The tail cap and threads are identical to a second gen Kel-Lite which was in early development at the time and will swap out. The spring is slightly different. The main difference is in the switch which instead of having the reflector contact move it contains a jumper inside the switch itself to make or break contact with the body and the reflector contact is stationary. This setup was intended to reduce contact problems associated with wear on the reflector but instead caused contact issues inside the switch as the contacts are very thin and were in need of constant adjustment. My 4D Gem-Lite is shown below.

If this were in the present Kel-Lite would have likely sued for patent infringement. However, at the time materials and machine shops were in such short supply Kel-Lite knew they could corner the supply market and run Gem-lite afoul instead. That they did and along with Gem-Lites inferior quality they shuddered by the early 70s.

Gem-Lites other big product was the tear gas dispensing flashlight. I have a prototype Kel-Lite dispenser I've covered here. The machine shop that produced this prototype was the one that turned into Gem-Lite and beat Kel-Lite to the market. However this item was not really popular and never sold well. I don't own one of these but Gem-Lite produced a lot of them early on. Shown below is my Gem-Lite next to a 2nd gen Kel-Lite to show the glaring similarities.

As always I'm looking to buy vintage and rare aluminum flashlights. Please let me know if you have any, top dollar paid.