I’d like to add a comment or two, or three, or …

There seems to be a constituency that is absent from these discussions and that’s the new collector. The lines of reasoning expressed so far tend to talk about preserving the value of our collections. This takes many forms, such as the impact of GLOW editions on the LE versions. Or the relative effect of a 2nd LE on the original’s worth. Maybe I’m in left field here, but I think the one thing that will assure the long term value of any of our collections is the continued entry of new, excited, committed lighthouse lovin’ nuts like us.

If HARBOUR LIGHTS cannot capture new collectors, the jig is up for all of us. What are we going to do, pass the one remaining intact Point Arena among ourselves for an ever increasing price? That’s not realistic. We need new collectors. Without them, eventually there’s no market at all.

If you accept that we need new collectors, then I think it’s unreasonable to expect them to become as enthusiastic about lighthouses and Harbour Lights as this audience is, without the chance to own LIMITED EDITIONS of the same popular, romantic and historic lights that we had a chance to buy. Which lighthouse is more likely to capture a persons imagination, Portland Head or Crooked River? (It’s in Florida). Cape Hatteras or Price’s Creek? (It’s in North Carolina).

Harbour Lights product is accurate reproductions of REAL lighthouses. Whether there are 500 standing, or 1500 that have ever stood, it’s a finite resource. Eventually HARBOUR LIGHTS will sculpt the last one. What happens to the collections then? Do we all just dust the ones we have and move on to Anchor Bay? I don’t think I’d like that. I’d rather have a new look Cape May or Buffalo. This is a real consideration. Maybe not in the next ten years, but these things we all love to collect are not hatched in some ones imagination. Harbour Lights can’t just dream up a new one and put it in clay.

If you’re still reading after all of that, thanks. I have one more point. I think the idea to re-issue some of the popular lights (Portland Head, Cape Hatteras, Key West(?), etc.) as Limited Editions somehow tied to a ‘Harbour Lights Lighthouse Preservation Trust’ is worth exploring. Once done, maybe these editions could be re-issued themselves periodically. This serves the dual purpose of limiting the number of available versions of any one lighthouse and affording new collectors the opportunity have an LE of all the lights we old-timers had a shot at.