I bought a padlock over the weekend from a garage sale.
It looks pretty old, about 5" tall, weighs about 2-3 lbs. It has a brass plate on the front that reads;
ALCATRAZ San Francisco 68
There is no other writing on the lock or keys. Works good.
Anyway, Its not for sale, but I'd like to find out more about it. I'm hoping to hook up with a few collectors out there, can anyone suggest a good starting point?
tia
How anyone can be taken in by such obvious forgeries is beyond my comprehension... Typically Government property will be marked "U.S. Government Property" or some similar engraved or stamped text on the padlock itself...
Those brass plates are cute and all, but I bet its just superglued on there [or maybe just the little stick-back brass plate] if the person who made it is a cheapo...
Evan, ~~ formerly a maintenance man, now a college student...
holy cow, you should change your name to starstruck! heck even old man key knew that one LOL
Actually, federal prisons have a little better security than that to the point that you are unlikely to see a lock have any markings at all unless you are on the inside. There is a standard policy in place that all markings must be ground off of locks and keys before they are discarded.
I have had some locks that were previously in use at San Quentin prison and on one you could see that it had only been marked San Q. That could be seen because there had been a poor job of grinding off the stamping.
Pe>
The American Lock Collectors' Association's Journal of Lock Collecting frequently details these fakes and frauds.
alca-online.org
David Rankl Secretary snipped-for-privacy@aol.com
Also, West Coast Lock Collectors' Association
Bob Heilemann Secretary snipped-for-privacy@earthlink.com
And for British / European etc collectors, myself.
These fakes pour out of India, mainly to separate US collectors from their money. (British collectors are not so interested in padlocks.)
Richard Phillips
how clever!!
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