Your biggest Harbour Light disappointment

Ok, now that Harbour Lights is no more, and it's return unlikely, let's here your biggest Harbour Light disappointment. By that I mean, "I wish they would have made", "I wish they would have had a reunion here" etc....

For mine, I was surprised and disappointed that the Great Lakes region was never covered with a Collectors Society gift piece. Seems this would have been a no brainer. I know Port Sanilac was covered way back when, but that was w redemption piece.

I also would have liked to see some (or all) of the Duluth area lights made.

What's yours?

Mike

My biggest disappointment was never having the opportunity to attend a Reunion. My wife's medical problems is my first concern and traveling a distant further than a day's drive was impossible. I tried to convince HLs that a Reunion in Daytona Beach Area during October/November was a safe gamble but was never able to persuade them to have one in Central Florida.

Mine was the loss of the store events and not being able to attend any of the regional events. We did not discover Harbour Lights in time to attend the very firt reunion, which is also high on the list.

Loss of store events..I miss not seeing Bill and Nancy. I was able to attend one regional event - Portsmouth, and only attended two reunions, Mackinac and Alaska. Found out about the Baltimore reunion too late, and wasn't collection HLs before then. Miss seeing all the HL folks I consider friends

That no little llght of mine was made for any of the reef lights. I talk to them about it for 2 or 3 years and then went out of business. Second would be they never made Sombrero Key Lighthouse the tallest of the reef lighthouses.

My biggest disappointment is that they closed the business down all together. I wish someone could have kept it going. It was so fun seeing the new lights come out and coming to the forums to talk with everyone about it.

OK, I have to second this. I went to a regional event in Atlanta. It was like one big party! Bill was his wonderful hilarious self. Got to meet a lot of collectors and I wound up winning an HL limited edition light and two Mark Sherman prints. Will never forget that meeting.

The creation of the GLOW line and raising limited edition numbers above 5500...it killed the hunt and devalued collections...

To this day, I'm still disappointed that HL:

Didn't make OLD Tillamook Rock, OR, the way it was originally built and put it higher up on a bigger rock...

Didn't make a Mile Rocks, CA sculpture...and

Made way, way WAY too many Little Lights...

There are plenty of LLOM collectors out there and they were more affordable then the LEs.

And there are some LLOM out there that are not so easy to find and go for twice their retail,

Yes to Rich and to Daniel. But here is an illustration of Rock's point about LLOM impact on the market.

In my case, LLOMs became a substitute for LE's. In some cases, LE's I already had. I boxed up the LE, put it the closet and put the the LLOM on display. The shelf space of a single LE and fit three or four LLOMs.

Once an LE went back in the box, the thrill of the hunt, the anticipation of a new release, were pretty much gone.

I don't think that any one thing lead to the demise of HLs. It was several things all contributing to the Younger's realizing that the ride was over.

Rick

Rock - Have you suggested to Harry that your choices to have made are the above?

The LLOM's, for the most part, appeal to a different type of customer. They're not in it for the "thrill of the hunt". They only want a small memento of lighthouses they have visited. Some collectors DO collect all of the LLOM's, but that's a vast minority. I personally don't think the LLOM's really made much of an impact on the Limited Editions.

I stand by what I said, once the smaller pieces came out, it pulled focus from the LE line and caused a slump in sales...just like the GLOWs...if only they'd shrunk the size of the LE's so that more could fit in a collector's curio! Well they actually did, right before the death knell had been sounded...