Super thanks to reader Hannah, who spotted this one: A big stash of New Old Stock (NOS) mid century modern and postmodern lights for sale from etsy seller Moon Lighting Vintage. Based on Hannah’s tip, I reached out pronto to get permission to show the photos and to feature the back story. Yup, there is one, same as usual: Inventory pushed back on the shelf in old timey longtime store — discovered and uncovered by someone who recognized their worth. Seller Miss Abby says there are about 200 lights — and there are many mix-and-match pieces if you want to do an entire room — or maybe an entire house. More more more –>>
Esty seller Miss Abby writes:
My best friend and I recently stumbled upon the lights. I’ve just moved to a very small town in rural Texas and had to run to the local hardware store located in the old downtown buildings. I caught sight of a couple of vintage light fixtures hanging up for sale alongside their other typical items. When I asked about them, she told me that years ago they had bought the contents of a hardware store in a nearby town that had gone out of business years before that. The lights have never been sold to a customer, they just been sitting in one of the hardware stores. My list kept getting longer of the ones I wanted, and the same thing happened to my friend when she saw them. We dug around in a storeroom with the ceiling falling in to find the neatest, most complete lights we could. We bought them out at nearly 200 lights and nobody can use that many, no matter how much we love them. I’m really having a hard time offering them for sale though!
Many of the lights have exact duplicates and/or coordinating fixtures either in color or style. That’s a big deal to me – I love the idea of doing a whole area in matching lights. I’ve got about 20 lights listed and a lot more to go.
UNHEARD of, pretty much, to find complete sets like this!!! If I had the tiki house in Florida, this set would be MINE MINE MINE.
I SIMPLY ADORE the hobnail glass glove. ADORE~
Oh, this one (above) would look so fantastic in my office. CAN I RESIST?
Brand name spotted: Progress (good brand) Town and Country Collection. LUV
Thank you so much, Hannah, for this tip. READERS, keep those tips coming — they help make the blog the SUPER AWESOMIST it can be, Kate and I JUMP when we get them. 
Again, the link to shop these lights: Moon Lighting Vintage on etsy.com
Beautiful! The seller lives about 15 minutes from me! I’ve already added them to my favorites, I can’t wait to see what else they list!!
Not sure I would call McKinney a small rural town though, they have a population of 136,000+ people
136.000 – isn’t that considered small…in Texas?:-)
Wow. Thanks for the light porn Pam!
Yup — Light Porn, that’s about right! Don’t write that on Twitter, though, we’ll get all kinds of unwanted traffic!
Ha! I knew there had to be a reason for faithfully following your site – it’s the porn (but only the most tasteful retro kind).
It’s all so darn sexy, no denying.
I bought one (yellow space ship-ish with scallops) for my kitchen…couldn’t resist the temptation.
LOL!!! Thank goodness collecting light porn isn’t illegal, or I’d be facing a life sentence!!!
Holy Smokes!! I have the compass light!!! I put it in my office because that is where I need the most direction! HA! Found it at the re-store.
So far I see five lights sold immediately — cool!
I just messaged her because two of the lights I want are gone! Fingers crossed that she has more!
Hee! I have the copper UFO model in my kitchen, courtesy of ReStore for $6.
What awesome finds these are!
How many bulbs does it take and max wattage. I kinda like this fixture but need something that puts out a lot of light. Thanks!
Wow, what a great awesome find! I’m especially partial to the calico fixtures, and there are SO many of them!!! Matchy Matchy!
LOL, of course this happens right after I give up on finding the perfect vintage fixtures and buy new ones!
Would it be gauche to pat myself on the back for finding these????
To Abby – HOW did you get all those things back to your home? Were they all in boxes or did you have to plan with tons of bubble wrap???
Hello! What a neat blog! I think I have a new addiction!
I’m so happy to have these lights featured on here.
hannah – Big thanks to you! My friend and I actually took all the towels out of my house and moved them from the store to my home in the back of our Suburbans! Luckily I’ve moved recently so I’ve got wrap and boxes to pack them in. We spread them all OVER my house! Most of them were not boxes anymore; they had been put together to display. I’ve got soooo many more lights to list!
Elyse – You’re absolutely right! McKinney isn’t small. My friend lives close to there. I live in the sticks
We’re going to try to take some of them to the trades day in the next few months.
Thanks guys!
Thank you Abby for satisfying my curiosity.
What a great story you have there!
I’m glad to have facilitated the connection. There was just too much quality, variety, and AMOUNT of the style of lighting that we all hope to acquire to complete our homes NOT to drag Pam into it!!
All the lighting is fabulous. Thank YOU, for recognizing what you saw and saving it all from who knows what fate???
Oh my goodness, you are killing me!!! These are amazing. What a great find!!! I especially love the ceiling mounted ones, it is so hard to find good ones that are not home depot-y or too school house-y. I got my retro mod ones from Rejuvenation but now I want these!
Just ordered the copper one shown just above the yellow flower one you like so much. Will look perfect in my kitchen. It has a copper vent hood and back splash over the stove! Thanks for posting.
Lucky you! That was the first one that really caught my eye.
Whew, sorry you did not get it…but, glad I was quick on the draw! I am so looking forward to it. We are redecorating our house and I have learned to make fast decisions or be left in a cloud of dust!
Beautiful ceiling light — that one and others. SO HARD today to find great ceiling fixtures! Congrats!
No worries Rena. I wasn’t in a buying mood, and we have all the vintage lighting we need right now. Well, I could use one or two ceiling lights in the kitchen, but I’m not in the market at the moment. So, I’m glad an RR fan got it!
It seems that every house built in the ’70s had those globe ball lights! I think they look really cool, and they go with almost any decor.
Not MY Mom…oh, no way would she have one of those ‘garish things’ in her home. I only WISH. I frequently lament my story about my uber cool musician Dad who was into danish modern, and my wonderful but “square” Mom, eventually, infiltrated with the danish modern with Early American *gak* (!!!)
However, their cocktail party friends had much more mod homes than us, and that’s where I got a lot of my appreciation for the MCM/mod/kitsch style.
Are all of them to be hard-wired? Since I rent, I want a couple swag lamps although I think they are identified as something else nowadays.
You need to message the seller to ask. You might also want to call a local lighting shop and ask them if they could rewire with a plug for you — I think it’s very do-able.
You know what is amazing? No matter where in the country you may have lived, we ALL remember seeing (and having) most of these lights! I mean, you would have found them in NYC or in Anchorage. I think that’s one of the cool things about classic Americana–it is universal and pervasive, and it unites us in our appreciation of it. Even the gauche becomes mysteriously attractive, as memories are evoked.
Grandma had those down-rod lights in the living room that were SO typical in homes built in the ’30s & ’40s. One time, some of us kids were fooling around, and I accidently threw a sock up into the fixture. Not wanting to get in trouble, I said nothing; just went around with one sock till it wore out. In 1982, after grandma passed away, we were cleaning out the house. (We were now all adults.) When I reached up to dust the fixture, out came a sock. All the cousins came running when they heard me scream “Oh, my God!” We all sat there and laughed off our asses. That fixture that everyone hated suddenly became the most-gorgeous thing on earth–keeper of an unexpected memory. Every one of us remembered that sock-throwing from 30 years earlier! And God love grandma–she was laughing right along with us!
What a wonderful story. Yes: When it came to lighting, it seems like there were a few mega-manufacturers.
That is hilarious and such a special memory! I love anything vintage, old school, but what caught my eye about these lights were the metal cutout scroll ones. My grandma has a white one above her kitchen sink that I’ve always adored. I’ve started a good collection of her Crazy Daisy Corelle and now I’ve got her lights. It made me smile at Christmas to hear her say, “I feel like I’m in my kitchen.”
O.M.G. BEST story EVER! Seriously, I about spit my drink.
So, one question: Who is now the keeper of “the sock” ????
Well, another 30 years have gone by, and we’re all too old to remember! Honestly, though, I think I threw it back up as a “gift” for the new owner. Shortly after the incident, everyone started fighting over grandma’s stuff like a bunch of vultures. I got so disgusted, I had to leave, and have never returned. Twenty years later, I acquired the original Turner painted flamingo mirror that hung right next to the front door, and it is now being lovingly cared for in my dining room. (Another piece of Americana that is universally recognized.)
I am sitting here just stunned. Simply stunned. Heading over now.
I love it when someone recognizes history and saves it for us. Can’t believe those orange print kitchen fixtures are a complete set. They would be the start of a whole new kitchen.
Char, very easy to rewire with a plug and also change over again. Run fast and pick one out. You can add small chains to hang with simple lamp hardware.
The train one was up in my room when I was a kid. Still have it.
I’m so happy to see the comments appreciating the rescuing of these lights. They truly were a rescue because the majority of them were in the store room – not climate controlled and we could here pieces of the roof falling in. Consequently that’s why some already have thin lines of rust or discolorations.
After we bought them, we heard more than once, “Why would you want to do that?”
I have never bought on Etsy before, If I want to purchase a light do I pay you directly? Not sure how it works. Thanks!
I set up the shop to take credit cards, but Etsy handles that for me. Just set up an etsy account, add your light to cart, and you’ll be able to enter cc info at checkout. Easy!
Thanks!
Thanks! I see the fixtures are going fast, I am checking periodically to see what else pops up.
I SCREAMED aloud when I saw the kids’ one!
This made me smile.
My parents used single-globe versions of the one with the black scroll work in the master suite they added to our house in the early 1970s.
And the other three bedrooms each had one of the square bowl ceiling fixtures right in the center of the room. One of my brothers had cowboys on the one in his room. I remember when we were in elementary school, a friend of mine asked why there was an ashtray hanging in the middle of our bedroom ceilings! The bedrooms in her house were lit by lamps plugged into outlets operated by the light switch near the door.
What a cool find. Great that you saved these and they are already finding homes where they will be treasured.
We’ve had a great response on the lights! We’re offering 20% off to you guys on what’s left. Use coupon code TD20OFF at checkout. Thanks!
Oh my, thank you so much for the heads-up on these! We bought 2 of the copper atomic-age lights and they look FAB in our kitchen.