1968 First Year 5D Kel-Lite

I recently picked up a super rare first year 5D Kel-Lite. This light is extremely rare as Kel-Lite made only a couple hundred of them during their first year in production. Don has a complete history of the lights on his web site at https://kellite.com/kel-lite-history/ so I won't re-hash that here. The early lights are easily distinguishable by their knurled tail cap without markings.  All lights were D cells and were all large (flood) heads and stamped San Dimas as the original location was based in San Dimas.

This light was owned by a Riverside County Sheriff's officer. It is heavily personalized with the officer's name and badge number. These lights cost only $18 in 1968 but that is equivalent to $140 today so it's easy to see why the officer wanted to keep track of the light.  Riverside County is right next to Los Angeles County where this light was produced so as with most other extremely early model flashlights from other manufacturers they were distributed closest to the factory.

Up until I purchased this light I had never seen any first year Kel-Lites so I was very much interested in acquiring this light. Aside from it's end cap it is substantially similar to other first generation Kel-Lites. The slide switch operation is identical. These lights also lacked a serial number as well. This light is obviously well used and has seen some action. As can be seen above the switch is close to failure although I likely won't change it as it adds character to the light. The question I get is how does this light hold up today? Fantastic! As can be seen below it still operates flawlessly and is plenty bright throwing about 40 lumens. Not too bad for a 50+ year old light. The brightness may be a far cry from today's lights but it is still plenty bright for most common tasks.

Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy this very rare and interesting find.

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