There is a Grays Harbor variation on Ebay that was listed Thursday(9th). It was also on there last week but no bids. The opening bid is $27.99. It is the lantern room variation with the lantern room windo being misorientated by 45 degrees.

Good catch Rich

Haven't heard about this one before. Do you have any additional information? Where did you get this information from? Is the whole run of 9,500 incorrect? If not, at what number did they make the correction? Only thing on HL's "variations" site is a picture with a caption reading "assembly error."

Thanks,

Sandy

Sandy, according to the Fifth (and last) edition of HL Survival Guide by Jim Rutherford, this is what happened:

"A variation of Gray's Harbor was found. Because of the height of the tower and the size of the beacon room, the factory (unknown to HL) chose to produce this lighthouse in two pieces. The top of the tower was inserted onto the rest of the lighthouse.

The problem? They forgot to 'key' the two pieces. Good manufacturing practices call for the two pieces to have knobs and grooves so that the two pieces could only be assembled one (the correct) way. This did not happen in the first 6000 made.

Less than 10% of the initial batch was assembled incorrectly. On these few, the window below the lantern room does not line up over the tower door. It is rotated 45 degrees.

Because it was a random production error, the serial numbers of this variation are randomly distributed. This also makes it impossible to know how many Gray's Harbors are mis-made."

Hope that helps.

Frome the Time Machine..

Part One

Part two..

Part three...

There are other threads where it is mentioned but this was the main one..

Actually what Rutherford wrote is a little misleading. On a normal Grays Harbor if you follow the tower up from the tower entrance at ground level there will be a window lined up with the tower entrance. The door which is located on the tower catwalk is rotated 45 degrees ccw. On the variations there are a possibility of eight scenarios depending on how the top part of the tower was installed but I only know of two that are known for sure. The most common is to have no window above the ground level tower entrance and have the catwalk door located at a 90 degree position ccw. The second secenario is to have no window located above the ground level tower entrance and to have the catwalk door rotated 45 degrees cw positioning the catwalk entrance directly above the ground level entrance door. So far as I know and from reports on the CF I am the only one to have the cw variation.

There is no way by looking at the back of the tower to determine which variation this is because you cannot see the catwalk entrance from this view. The ONLY thing this picture show is it is a variation from the location of the window at the back of the tower. There is also no know serial number range that this variation can be linked to. If you are into variations this is a little know variation but it was reported on first by a member of the Forums. I cannot remember who it was that reported on it.

Wow!! Talk about "ask, and you will receive."

Thanks to all of you.

Sandy

P.S. Have set aside a curio cabinet for "Mistakes," and hope to add this one to the others I have.

I will add that the highest number I found on ebay is 5633. The lowest reported on this forum is 1137. The general consciences is that there are somewhere between 200 and 400 of this variation. Because of the 8 sides there 8 different possible variations. I believe in most collectors eyes one variation is enough so we usually categorize the Gray Harbor as having the standard top and the rotated version. The value of a rotated top was around $150 at that time, but I beleive some went as high as $300

If you read the previous threads you will see that a collector from Florida has a cw variation and that is me. My number is #834. I've asked in the past if there are anymore that are cw but no takers. Maybe this is another one but you won't be able to tell until someone buys it.

Rich,

Curious how you determined that the one on eBay is a variation. Picture's so dark, I can't see the details.

Sandy

The back side of the tower's center panel does not have a window at the top as a normal piece would. If you have a normal Grays Harbor, look at it from this view. The windows are on each side of the center tower panel indicating the front tower center panel does not have a window above it. With no window above the front center panel it is a variation.

For those that don't know, this variation was discovered and reported first by our own Fred Kuhlman, AKA the Ancient Mariner.

It never ceases to amaze me how knowledgeable about HL everyone is. What one person doesn't know, another one does. Sometimes several different people have different bits and pieces of information that come together when these discussions start up. It's just great!

Received Gray's Harbor, WA today. Many thanks to flacoastie for bringing this to everyone's attention. I'm pasting my inventory copy here. Based on previous data, I have Variation #1.

Gray’s Harbor
Washington
HL 202

NOTE: There are windows on the 2nd, 4th, 6th, & 8th panel. The door to the lantern room is on the 3rd panel, and is not centered on that panel..

Seahorse Location: At the base of the tower on the left; same color as grass. Head faces vestibule--she's lying on her stomach.

Did I miss something, Sandy? Did you get the one on ebay?

Grace,

Yes. $36 + $10 Shipping. Just me and one other bidder.

Sandy