Help!

tonykimatpl

Hey guys, my name is Tony, and I live in Canada. I am getting into lock collecting [I liked locks since I was 3 years old.] But so far, I only have a couple of master locks, and other cheap locks. After realising I had a crappy collection, I decided I needed some more high quality locks. I was looking for lever locks in specific, but I would also like some best, interchangeable core padlocks in the future. The problem is, I COULD NOT, find any reliable place for padlocks. All the sites that sell lever locks were in the UK, and I could not find anywhere in North America. After going to like, 3 lock shops/locksmiths, I gave up and came here for my last resort. Please help as I am very desperate for a good padlock.

Thank you so much!
-Tony

wylk

One of the more common places to find locks is eBay but of course it helps to be a “seasoned” lock collector to avoid fakes or uninteresting locks. There are a few lock shows in the US (Los Angeles area; Lancaster Pennsylvania; Indianapolis; and Bristol Connecticut). I don’t know about Canada.

There are a couple of lock collecting journals: Journal of Lock Collecting, for the American Lock Collectors Association, and the Antique Lock Collector for the West Coast Lock Collectors Association. I know the latter sells back issues on CD-ROM and this might be educational.

Useful books include The Padlock Collector by Frank Arnall (sixth edition) and Locks and Lockmakers of America. I’m sure others here have other suggestions.

If you have antique stores in your area this can be a possible source but usually they have a small number, if any.

Adrian Weber

Hey Tony,

Welcome in our community mate! Are you looking for old or new lever locks? There are only a very few lever type of locks in production nowadays. The Abus 234 is very nice one for example, the key for it is still forged steel. Burg has the 394 and 398 both very nice but sadly the key is a zinc die cast nowadays… There is also a new Squire lever padlock and some more expensive ones as the Era, the Union or the Chubb battleship etc.

Adrian Weber

Those lever padlocks can still be bought along with the chubb 5 and 7 lever deadbolt lock in the UK. You should be able to find a dealer that ships to Canada mate.

If you see anything in my videos that you like. I can help you to find a dealer for the specific lock!

tonykimatpl

wylk wrote
One of the more common places to find locks is eBay but of course it helps to be a “seasoned” lock collector to avoid fakes or uninteresting locks. There are a few lock shows in the US (Los Angeles area; Lancaster Pennsylvania; Indianapolis; and Bristol Connecticut). I don’t know about Canada.

There are a couple of lock collecting journals: Journal of Lock Collecting, for the American Lock Collectors Association, and the Antique Lock Collector for the West Coast Lock Collectors Association. I know the latter sells back issues on CD-ROM and this might be educational.

Useful books include The Padlock Collector by Frank Arnall (sixth edition) and Locks and Lockmakers of America. I’m sure others here have other suggestions.

If you have antique stores in your area this can be a possible source but usually they have a small number, if any.

Thanks for all the info! I appriciate it. I will look into it. thanks!

[unknown]

KitBear

If it’s lever locks you are after try Chubb (Now Union), the Detainer range (Now “C” Range) are quite difficult to pick.

I personally love the victorian Detector Locks, they have a special lever inside, if someone was to try the wrong key or try to pick the lock the lever would jam in an upward position rendering the lock inoperable even to the owner, the only way to reset the lock is with the original key therefore indicating to the owner that the lock has been tampered with.

Regards

Kit