1E 0502-667 is a comparatively nearby Seyfert 1 galaxy discovered 40 years ago during follow-up observations of X-ray sources in the direction of the Large Magellanic Cloud. Despite its early identification as an AGN, only a few studies have been carried out of this target since then. We obtained a spectrum covering its entire optical range in 2019. This confirmed the presence of broad lines in the spectrum but also highlighted that the narrow line system in this AGN is one of the weakest ever identified for objects in this luminosity range. We present our profile fits and associated measurements of the spectral lines. The unusual spectrum also prompted us to analyse a decade-long set of brightness measurements from the ASAS-SN project and to obtain a series of observations during the last year with the Las Cumbres robotic telescope network. We present the results of our investigation of the spectroscopic and photometric data, which we here attempt to interpret with the aid of measurements available from other wavelength regimes (X-ray, infrared, radio).