Early on, what got me into lock collecting were cheap figural locks from India that I bought at an artshow. I know they are kind of cheesy and they’re pretty much frowned upon, but I enjoy them.
Don’t ask me how I got the notion, but later, I got the idea of acquiring a prison lock off Ebay. Knowing what I knew about how convincing Indian knockoffs could be, I never had any interest in Padlocks- I was always interested in built in Cell Door Locks. I couldn’t find any however, beyond the cheap Indian knockoff padlocks on Ebay.
Finding My Grail
Then the idea of looking on eBay sites beyond the US came to me- but two days too late. On the UK site was a highly japaned old style English cell door lock with a locking handle, that sold for the US equivalent of $27. I’ve been trolling eBay since then trying to find one without success. I think it’s why my collection has gotten so big- I keep on finding other locks beyond my original grail. I’ve lost a few auctions, been too broke at other times- but often the seller simply didn’t want to go through the hassle to ship to the US.
The lock above is made by G Smith and Sons Ltd, however probably the similiar locks were made byJames Gibbons Ltd and other companies. I recently found a similiar lock of a more recent vintage in Australia, but came in 2nd in the bidding. It’s just as well, shipping it to America would have cost $75 and my high bid was around $125- so it would have cost well over $200 to win the auction.
A couple of weeks later another English Style Prison Lock came onto the market, this time on the Ebay Uk site. This one, however was a modern Custodial Lock.
It wasn’t the English lock I had been searching for, but it does have the prominent lock handle and it’s even cooler than I thought. It has a button meant to be part of an automatic locking system, and when you press it, the lock handle spins around and throws the deadbolt. The recoil is humungous: I had it sitting on my lap- too close to my belly. I press the button for the first time and just about disemboweled myself.
As soon as I got it, I had to hang it up onto my wall. But that got me to thinking about how unsatisfied I was with the way the rest of my collection was displayed: locks sitting on top of locks, because I’d run out of space on my display bench. So I’ve been on a hanging binge and I’ve post a YouTube Video of the rest of my collection of mostly (but not exclusively) Prison Locks.
I actually posted two videos, but the first one sucks- it’s alot of jerky footage. I had already started captioning it however, so I haven’t taken it down. Rather than delete it, I added a soundtrack with loud, obnoxious death metal rock in the background (-these are prison locks after all). The 2nd video, which is the one I’ve post here is more stark: no captions, and narrative, and only minimal background noise. There is an accompanying text however on the actual YouTube page:
YouTube - Complete Lock Collection of Prison Locks: closeup and in detail
Enjoy!
