The NYC Transit Authority Will Sell You a Used 7-Inch Sealed-Beam Headlight for $45, And It Might Not Even Work

Dispatches from the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s third annual “Memorabilia and Collectibles Pop-Up Shop,” a yard sale for decommissioned subway car parts and station equipment.

If you woke up Friday morning in need of a 7-inch round sealed-beam headlamp, you could wander down to Wal-Mart and buy a brand-new example made by Sylvania for around $13. Or you could make your way to Coney Island, where the Metropolitan Transit Authority—the agency that oversees every subway, bus, and commuter train in New York City—would sell you a used one for $45, a 10-percent discount from yesterday’s price.

For a certain type of customer, this used item would be worth more than three times the going rate for a brand-new lamp – because it was recently removed from an R32 “Brightliner” subway car. The longstanding icon of subterranean travel in the Big Apple, the washboard stainless-steel subway cars were put into service in 1964 and could be seen throughout NYC’s subway system until 2020, when the last in-service example was retired. (Considering the average subway car travels 60,000 miles a year, with headlights on whenever the car is active, it’s likely that the MTA’s lamps would be close to the end of their useful life, if not fully burned out.)

This week, the MTA hosted its third Pop Up Shop, offering transit nerds the chance to bring home all sorts of decommissioned detritus chiseled off the hull of America’s largest public transit system. On a bright, crisp morning, I drove down to Coney to browse. A cheery crowd had already materialized when I arrived, about 80 percent 30-somethings in spotless Carhartt jackets, the rest neighborhood old-timers, reminiscing.

A steady flow of commerce was taking place, but a lot of folks seemed just as happy to meander. There was much fiddling with vintage cameras and selecting of grid-worthy iPhone pics. Most of the folks I spoke with had found out about the event from Instagram or TikTok, and seemed to have lots of time to browse on a Friday morning. (No judgment—that’s me, too.)

Here you could finally press the buttons and spin the dials that normally stay locked away at the front of the train. You could crank the Master Controller, the imposing lever that accelerates and slows the subway car, as tantalizing to a city commuter as the glimpse of the cockpit is to a geeky airline customer (again, no judgment). The red-handled emergency brake cable that dangles in every subway car, inspiring intrusive thoughts in reluctant commuters, could finally be pulled—albeit unsatisfyingly.

“Nothing sits, that’s the crazy part,” Paul Dvoskin told me. As director of supplier management and asset recovery for the MTA, Dvoskin oversees the agency’s yard sales. “Everybody loves this so much that things are just going.” The MTA sells decommissioned items year-round online, but the in-person sales have been a particular hit. Transit Authority employees cheerfully helped as folks searched out items from a particular station, or consulted as couples figured out how to fit a three-person bench yanked from a subway car up a flight of stairs and into a cramped kitchen.

Station signage made up most of the inventory. Ripped from its context on a train platform or the side of a building, a subway sign ends up being about 30 percent bigger than you’d guess. Most are flat sheetmetal, light enough to heft under your arm, but long enough to clonk into someone behind you as you walk around.

New Yorkers are insufferable about New York stuff, but I think anyone who obsesses over big people-moving machines can understand what attracted this crowd to this gravel lot on this day. Nobody travels anywhere without a reason; how we get around becomes part of our story, sometimes overshadowing our destinations. The sign for the highway exit that brings you home, the number on the flight that reunites you with your loved ones—these things take on meaning.

Also, for those of us who love Modernist design but can’t afford an Eames chair, the MTA’s memorabilia sale offers a chance to hang an authentic Massimo Vignelli work on the wall, with patina intact.

Pricing is determined by the three L’s: Location, location, location. Signs for well-known stations or neighborhoods get the biggest interest—and thus, the highest fare. “We had a couple of Times Square signs, I believe those went for over $2,000,” Dvoskin told me. “Lemme tell you, they got scooped up immediately.” A couple people on Dvoskin’s staff come up with a price for every item, from the dime-sized fare tokens that were replaced by swipe cards in 2003 ($3.25 each) to the massive wooden platform benches (500 pounds, buyer responsible for transport). “It’s historical significance, it’s geographical significance,” Dvoskin says of the pricing strategy. “If it’s something from, like I said, Times Square, Wall Street, stuff like that, that’ll be worth a little more.” The proceeds go into the MTA’s general account, same as your $2.90 turnstile fare.

So who treks down to the southernmost edge of Brooklyn on a Friday morning to buy grabholds from a Redbird, or a battle-scarred (hopefully disinfected) refuse bin, or a sealed-beam headlight—identical to the mandatory lamps on every US-market vehicle from 1940 to 1975—with Transit Authority provenance?

“We’ve had rail buffs, we’ve had New York buffs, just regular New Yorkers who love the city,” Dvoskin told me. “We’ve had people who moved away years and years and years ago and then decided to come down and pick something up, just to remind them. I mean, people love this stuff. We had one gentleman last year that set up a replica of an R32 subway car in his basement.”

I ended up buying a six-foot-long wayfinding sign from a station not too far from my home. It was too big for the trunk of my Grand Marquis, so it rode shotgun with me on the way home, perhaps the first time this piece of steel has seen sunlight since the day it was installed. As for the $45 sealed-beam headlights? They’d sold out yesterday.

Photo credits: R32 subway car in top graphic via new.mta.info; all other images by Bob Sorokanich