Yeah though I actually don't think lighting is as lucrative of a hobby as antique vehicles or other hobbies out there. I just don't think lighting is a popular enough hobby. Some rare collection items would probably sell quite fast and for a decent price but the majority of items you'd probably have a hard time selling for anything more than you got it for. In general I'd say it's not an appreciable asset like a house or antique vehicles. You'd make some money off it (but you could make "some money" by selling anything really) but unless you have some really rare and historical pieces you couldn't retire off it. There's just too few individuals out there interested in old lighting. Of lighting, traffic signals are probably the most lucrative as far as selling pieces go. Some signals sell for big bucks. If lighting was a sport, traffic signals would be golf (a rich person's sport) lol.
I'm hoping to stay within the general area I live in. Be it Rhode Island, eastern Connecticut, or southern Massachusetts. I want to live in a rural area but not be more than a 20 minute drive from stores and the freeway. I don't want to live way out in the sticks lol. Places in RI like West Greenwich, western Coventry, Exeter, Foster, or Hopkinton appeal to me (though many homes are very expensive in those areas except for the run-down shacks on 1800s and early 1900s farmland that I have no interest in living in; I want a house from the 60s or newer). Ideally I'd like to work overhead distribution for National Grid in RI but I'd be willing to work for NGrid in southeastern MA or Eversource in eastern Connecticut.
Today was my first class at NGrid's training facility and I'm already in love with the place. About half of the facility had those 2-lamp louvered "Target" troffers, as I call them (the troffers they use at Target with the 2X F32T8s on HBF) and the other half of the building has 2X4 lensed troffers (3X F40/RS, with the center lamps switched separate in the classrooms) and 2X2 U-bend T12 troffers. There's also wrap lights, some of which are F40/RS and others that are F32T8. All the highbays are T5/HO replacing what I assume was originally MH. One of the interior shops has mock pole sets up with equipment (all real stuff; poles and cable and other cheap stuff are all new and large more expensive stuff like transformers, capacitor banks, etc are all decommissioned items). One thing that caught my eye was a nice 100W HPS GE M-250R2 (NOS) on a steel 1-1/4" cantilever arm. It's got the thin narrow "10" on the NEMA tag, so the light is no later than the early 2000s. The photocell was wrapped in tape to make it a shorting cap but the light was turned off. I also saw a sealed-in-the-box GE M-250R2 up on a shelf with a HPS lamp in a sleeve on top of it and on a lower shelf I saw two more M-250r2s, a 70W one on a damaged short arm and another (unknown wattage) on a 6ft tapered elliptical which appeared to have some damage on the mounting flange.