I'm curious about how to find old mercury vapor ballfield/sports lighter-style floodlights. I've noticed they seem to be extremely uncommon when you search for them online, with almost all results being for metal halides.

I was also born after the peak MV era, and so I'm not sure I actually remember ever seeing any MV ballfield lights in use. This has got me wondering if MV ballfield lights were some of the first fixtures to be mass-phased out when MH and HPS became preferable. I still remember many other types of MV lights.

I'm also wondering, were these style lights a lot less common in MV, and didn't really take off until the MH era? If so, what was used to light ballfields and sports facilities during the MV era? I'm also guessing most of them were 1,000W and 1,500W like the MH ones, is this correct?

 

From what I have seen in some older catalogs, I have read that some North American mercury vapor ball field fixtures used 1000W H36 mercury vapor lamps that were overdriven at 1500W on dedicated ballasts in order to provide the most light output possible before metal halide lamps were even a thing.

Additionally, I have also read that there were some 1500W PS52 incandescent ballfield fixtures that possibly ran 105V incandescent lamps on 120V supplies to increase light output.

Since MH was starting to become mainstream in the 1970s, a good amount of the sports lighting market was already using MH. It had better color rendering and higher lumen output, albeit with the sacrifice of reliability. Mercury vapor was common as well, but it was the more cost-effective option back then. Prior to the market introduction of MH, existing incandescent was in use, likely since the 1940s and 1950s when MV had its mainstream debut. New incandescent sports lighting was being offered as late as the late '70s, which by then, HID had already dominated the sports lighting market.

I have read that some North American mercury vapor ball field fixtures used 1000W H36 mercury vapor lamps that were overdriven at 1500W on dedicated ballasts in order to provide the most light output possible before metal halide lamps were even a thing.

Update - I've since read this too. Running a 1,000W bulb in a 1,500W ballast would definitely severely reduce the lifespan, and as such sports facilities were probably the only place it made practical sense. I do wonder why there weren't explicit 1,500W MV bulbs like there are MH bulbs. Maybe they weren't cost effective to manufacture?

New incandescent sports lighting fixtures in the late '70s is crazy!

It might have made sense for fields that didn't receive much use at night or for residential tennis courts where the payback for MH would be much longer.

Overdriving 1000w MV lamps at 1500w was a practice mentioned in the Sylvania Engineering Bulletin for mercury lamps. Lamp life would be reduced to 2000 hours from 24000 hours. The ballasting details was unclear if dedicated 1500w ballasts were available or if two 700w ballasts were connected in parallel.