Someone asked about a source for the Jim Rutherford book a while back. I saw a clean copy of the 1997 version for sale today at $15 at the Artisan in Tempe AZ.

480-833-0495

Jim who? Boy we haven't heard his name in awhile. He did a great job on his books. It's too bad he faded from the Harbour Lights scene leaving many a collector with a bad taste in their mouth, so to speak.

:rolleyes: Bob :rolleyes:

Who's Jim Rutherford and why did Bob say, "It's too bad he faded from the Harbour Lights scene leaving many a collector with a bad taste in their mouth, so to speak"?

Is it time for me to bang the "Long Sad Tale of Woe Gong"?

Seriously, who is Jim Rutherford and what caused the bad taste? Did he feed everyone acidic cookies at the Reunion or something? (that was a stupid joke.)

To make a long story short, Jim Rutherford authored The Harbour Lights Survival Guide for 5 years. He put out 5 editions in the 5 years. They were probably the most informative books ever published on Harbour Lights listing variations, prices, history/backgroung on each lighthouse and projected values to mention just a few things that were included in his books. He also published a quartly news letter that equaled the Legacy in information and also included a trading post for lighthouses. The price of this guide was $25.00(if memory serves me correctly) and $16.00 for the quarterly news letter(again if memory serves me correctly). You paid in advance for both the book and the newsletter. All collectors that wanted his valuable information paid in advance for the coming year for the new book(6th edition) and the newsletters. Rutherford collected all the money and never sent the book or newsletter and no one was able to get in touch with him. He disappeared off the face of the earth so to speak and has not been heard of since. No one knows exactly how much money he stole from the collectors but it was obviously worth more to him then his reputation was.

Rutherford did seem to disappear from the face of the earth -- along with some of my hard earned money. What a Shame. Or should I say Scam?

He produced an excellent book and newsletter. And it was interesting and fun to read. He was always the captain and his wife was his first mate.

Maybe he was wisked up in a space ship and transportant to some distant planet.

Yes, Jim got some of our money too and no book or newsletter. He really did a good job on the Survival Guide and newsletter but he just disappeared. What can you do? Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. He and his wife are probably in some witness protection program!
Judy

I have since thrown away his books and newsletters since they are outdated anyway, and they are in no way important to the secondary market.

In fact this info is in no way important to the collectors any more either.

Now that we dug up Jim's fictional grave and beat him with the shovel a little, it makes me wonder if such a book could ever be resurrected. You could plagiarize the heck out of Jim's books. Do you think he's going to come after you for it?

Another interest problem that might enter the picture would be uniformity of all new HL releases. By this I mean the entire run of a model all look alike, they are all made in the same place, variations are basically a thing of the past, etc. In the old days of HL's, we had California pieces, Canadian pieces, China pieces, Malaysian pieces, lightning rod pieces, different windows, different doors, wrong state designations, name misspellings, paint variations, etc. It's not happening anymore. Every collector receives the exact same piece except for the different flag#'s.

What would the author be able to write about when every piece is a "rubber stamp" of that model?

Bob

Bob,

Your points are well taken. The later releases would really just amount to a list of releases, with the exception of the VARIATIONS.

bobo

every once-in-a-while, the Rutherford books appear on e-bay or half.com (the e-bay book affiliate). They are usually in the $10-12 range. At the time Jim wrote the books, if I remember correctly, there were other organizations/people also putting out information on the value of the items both new and used. It is hard to track secondary market value other than e-bay these days.

Two years ago, I tracked e-bay Harbour Lights sales for six months. It took a massive amount of time and energy to enter the items into a spreadsheet (I was tracking daily sales and comparing over time using some of the spreadsheet style discussed on these forums previously). It took at least an hour each day to comb through e-bay's list of sold items and then enter the information; I was using three spreadsheets and even with writing forumla style stuff to copy info from one sheet to another, it took time.

The exercise was worth it in the sense that over six months, one started to see the "real" value of a specific item as one could look at the bottom price paid, the upper price paid, and the averaged value to get a feel for "market" value. It also showed which items were "hot" and which "cool."

Do you still have those files? I am trying to reattempt the same thing for the use of CF members. I am trying to find examples of earlier projects to gete ideas from.

Ebay is both friend and foe. By this I mean eBay is a great source for HL's at unusually low prices (foe), and a chance to bid on some rare pieces you just can't find any other way (friend).

I wouldn't not be able to put a true value on my collection judging by what pieces are selling for on eBay.

Bob

Jim Rutherford’s books are a must for any collector that is intrigued with the early Harbour Light lighthouses. There is a lot of good information in his book and I believe I have it all memorized. The bad thing about Jim’s books is that not all the production counts of variation changes are correct. Jim also let out many of the variations. Since Harbour Lights did not keep good records then, most of Rutherford’s information came from Harbour Lights verbal account of things from memory. Production counts of each variation has also been a fault with the green book. The green book has more accurate account since most likely much of the green books information was from John’s web site and actual collectors including the author. I have been working on a spreadsheet since ebay started. I have been trying to complete the task that Rutherford and the Green book were un-able to complete and that is to log in all the variations.

Daniel.
I too have been trying to complete a list of various info on HL issues. I have a Microsoft Access Database that I have been working on for several years to try to accomplish this and this
latest MS Access Data base has been converted to version 2003 (It statred in MS Access 97 - if that means anything to you). Can you share the EXCEL file, if so - can you send to me at outenh@wmconnect.com
Thanks Harry