2017 Discontinued 4D and 3D Lights and Recent Maglite History

This year, 2017, Maglite has discontinued some long produced finishes on their incandescent lights. Maglite sometimes produces special finishes for only a short time and I've covered 2 of those here and here. They have also produced special order finishes with a large enough order. This time though it looks to be an overall reduction in their standard incan offering as most consumers switch to LED. The lights being discontinued are:

4D in Silver
4D in Grey
3D in Digital Camo

Most retailers, including Z Battery, Maglite's main online distributor, have already de-listed these lights. Maglite is currently in the process of selling any old stock on these through the Outlet section of their web site at http://maglite.com/shop/flashlights/maglite.html. A snap shot is shown below for future reference when they are sold out. Maglite usually lists lights for well over the price of other retailers on their web site in order to direct consumers to distributors instead. However, these lights are listed for around $28 each which is in line with normal retail prices. Mag has free shipping on orders over $75 so if you buy all 3 or some extra gear it's easy to get there.

I picked up one each of these lights in display (chipboard) boxes that I'll hang onto and add to my collection. I don't expect them to rise much in value but they should always be worth at least the retail price. 4Ds never had much variety in finishes and didn't sell as well as 2 and 3Ds so I'm not too surprised they were discontinued. 5 and 6Ds had almost no variety in finishes aside from blue and red with only red remaining. The camo finishes are painted on and don't wear well so it's not surprising the digital camo was discontinued either. If more finishes or lights are discontinued I'll post those as well.

The grey 4D is a 15,594,703 serial, the silver 4D is a 15,559,375 serial and the 3D is a 49,967,802 serial. It's crazy to think that these high volumes of lights have been produced but Maglite has been in business for almost 40 years now. It's also neat to show how much more popular the 3Ds are. In fact 2Ds and 3Ds are Maglites best sellers. 3Ds have outsold 4Ds 3 to 1.

It's interesting to note too that on all 2012+ lights the patented text has been removed from the lights. This text originally started out as "Paten Pending" in 1979 and 1980 then went to "Patented Made in U.S.A" from 1981 to 2002, then just "Patented in U.S.A." due to Maglite's inability to source enough American made parts to satisfy California Law. It's an interesting law and details can be found here. Starting in 2012 the stamping was dropped all together. It's likely not needed due to the mentioning of the patent info on the package and would save a little production cost. More info about the evolution of the D cells can be found in my Quick Dating Guide.

If you order lights directly from Mag Instrument they come packaged as shown below. The tamper proof tape is neat and mostly meant for large orders and retailers. Each display box was also packaged inside its own cardboard box. I should also note that the incan D cells, especially camo, must be slow movers these days because the 3D digital camo still had a flange base bulb whereas most other models already switched over to the bi-pin setup in 2012. Shown below are the business ends of these lights so you can see the bulbs.

As always I'm looking to buy Vari-Beams and Vintage/Rare Mags. Please let me know if you have any, top dollar paid.