eBay purchase

I normally don't collect variations and don't speculate by buying multiples when I think an item will be hot. However, I have in the past gotten a few duplicates. When my original dealer went out of business and before my new dealer could get started, I dealt all over the country. Today I have two sets of Keepers and Friends, ordered in June of 97, and I forgot to cancel. Oh well, I have more than one curio and they are nice LITTLE conversation pieces and set off the lighthouses real well.

This Wacko totally agrees Rod. I can't believe a dealer would pre-sell a lighthouse at an inflated price. This is totally non customer service oriented. This drives me crazy!!!!! Sure its a free country, and sure dealers will charge what the market will bare, on the other hand I think this is a Collector Education Problem. I'll wager that the dealer didn't bother to educate the collector on how Harbour Light Retirement occurs and that the collector could call Harbour Lights to recieve the phone numbers of other dealers that they could optionally deal with. Yeh, the dealer might lose this one sale but their ethics would be intact and the potential for happy customers would still be there. If you were a customer of this place would'nt you be a little nervous. How many lighthouses would you have to buy a year from this place knowing you could sleep at night and not have to worry about being put into this situation. Dealers wake up!!!! Retirement Doesn't mean UNAVAILABLE not on the shelf to the retail buyer and it doesn't mean that every lighthouse has someone's name on it. Please, Please stop attributing to these horror stories. Isn't retail enough of a profit?

Heres a story for you, this is one of the horror stories that got me into the Retired@Retail business. In December 97 I walked into a Dealers store. I was chatting with them for quite a while and the dealer was telling me that he also sold Secondary out of his back door. I guess he got pretty comfortable talking with me and he dropped his guard. He began to tell me how an older lady had been searching for the Big Bay Point Lighthouse (Christmas 95). He told her that they were long retired and that he could get one for her. Yeh, get, he got it right off his shelf 2 minutes after he talked to her. Then he proceeded to sell it to her for $1,000 plus tax. Can you imagine this? I sure couldn't and I was having a hard time hiding my disgust. Needless to say this dealer has never gotten a referral from me and never will. Merry Christmas to the poor victim. I hope the recipient never finds out how many of these lighthouses they could have purchased with that kind of money. And the thing that really drove it home for me was the smile and feeling of accomplishment this dealer had on his face when he told me the story. It wasn't many months later that John and I started kicking around the Retired@Retail page.

Help your collectors help you. The happier they are the more they buy and the more valuable all our collections become.

Shame on the Bad Dealers, Don't use them, you have plenty of other options. The easiest is good old Harbour Lights Customer Service for the location of another dealer.

SeAnDiEgO
Locked in the Beavers cage, the Beaver has the key.

[This message has been edited by BuyGlass (edited 01-18-99).]

It is a total shame that these unjust actions take place. As long as these "shady" dealers are out there and there is a dollar to be made, it will continue.

On the bright side, I would have to guess that the great majority of the dealers out there are honest. These are the ones who care about the customer and are looking for repeat sales.

Education is your best weapon in this battle, and this web site is a good place to obtain some good knowledge.

-Todd

I am appalled that a HL sanctioned dealer would do such a thing and extremely grateful there is such a great site to help reduce such a scalping. I hope that HL will have some sort of chat with the dealer. I know that a main goal in life is to make money but sad to see it done at another's expense.

Thank you again John, for this wonderful site.

It disgusts me also to know that a dealer involved in such a small collectibles market would take advantage of a single sale. With the publicity of the web? I wonder if he thought that so many people (collectors) would find out? I know that if it were up to me, he would never do it again, or not sell another Harbour Lights Lighthouse. I wouldn't hold it against the buyer if he backed out of the purchase. I wonder if he feels as insulted as I would? Dud he know what he was doing??

Buyer beware! If the purchaser had any HL savy he or she should have known that he or she was paying a premiun over and above retail. Are we all to blame for putting this unforunate buyer in that position by talking of a quick sell out of Hillsboro and make sure you have one reserved with a dealer or you might miss out.

As of this date I have not reserved a Hillsboro. Sanibel Island cause a similar frenzy and I still see them at retail on dealer shelves.

Last point, has anybody bothered to look up who the "shady" dealer is? Has anybody determined whether the person may not be a dealer but reserved a dealer's allotment for resale? You can't blame a dealer for someone else's deals. Obviously the seller is counting on supply and demand to put more dollars in his or her pocket.

Do I really feel bad for the buyer? Yes, I suppose I do. I wouldn't want it to happen to me. I wouldn't want it to sour a new collector away from the HL line either.

That's the word from the East Coast where it's 50 degrees and raining..

It is a present retail dealer, Bob. They have their own web page also.

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-RodW