Review of the New Point Loma
The NPL collecting history goes something like this. For the 1997 reunion the participants were able to purchase the New Point Loma for $70, when the 480 participants returned home, they started selling their extra New Point Loma’s. This helped them pay for the cost of the reunion. Collectors fell in line trying to buy the NPL at the best price before they would go up anymore in value. Besides it being Habour Lights first skeleton lighthouse of this type, it also had a production of only 950. In the eyes of many collectors this lighthouse was as rare as the coquille. Besides less was made of the NPL than the coquille. The coquille had a production of 1138 and was selling for around $2600 from Mike Richards at that time and it was selling even higher by others. The other lighthouse used as a comparison was the Portland head that was going from $700 to $900 at the time.
The wrong thing about comparing the NPL to the Coquille was that the NPL was available with many collectors ready to unload their extras. The coquilles were absorbed into the public and extremely hard to find. Another thing that hurt the sales was that many collectors didn’t consider the NPL a real Harbour Light collectable since it was not offered through the dealers but only offered to reunion participants.
But as collectables go, the New Point Loma enjoyed a hefty secondary market value. I believe the first ones that were sold went for around $700 until the secondary market peaked out at $1400. I heard of some private sales where reunion members sold their NPL of as high as $2000 a piece. But in around 6 months or so, after the smoke cleared, it didn’t take long for the New Point Loma to fall into its perspective value of $750. When I use the term perspective value, I mean the best possible price and the best place to find the best price was the AOL lighthouse collectables bulletin board.
The NPL probably held that value until ebay got in full swing in 1999. This is the date when most of the HL values started to fall. The New Point Loma kept dropping in value until 2005 where it held a ebay value of a low of $260 to a high of $350 until today where it sells for Retail to as high as $150.
Last edited by DANIEL; 11/25/11 08:35 AM.
