If you get a low number at the time a piece is first released, your chances of getting a variation have been historically better. I think that HL is more careful nowadays than ever before, so that possibility is diminished, though it does still happen (blue felt American Shoal, for example).

However, I think the desireability of a low number comes to us from the art print world, where low number prints are sometimes of better quality than the higher numbered prints because the printing plates themselves wear during the run. This is also true of some cast pieces, but not of HLs. Not enough models are ever made from the original for any of them to exhibit any noticeable wear.

Orv and I have exchanged several back channel notes on this topic, and it seems that for every example where the low number seems to factor into a higher price, there's another example that defies and even refutes that rule of thumb.

I remain skeptical that edition number has much at all to do with the going price. When it does, it is because there just happens to be a buyer looking for and willing to pay extra for a low number at the time when one comes on the market. This seems to happen rarely enough to cause the "rule" to break down overall; i.e., the "rule" isn't one, imo.

------------------
-Art