As usual, the resident Damage Fairies have taken up their habitual positions at the back door of the Harbour Lights factory, where they liberally sprinkle their meaningless "Inspected" tags among the outgoing boxes of product. I recently ordered and received the El Morro piece from Nags Head, and the balustrade at the top had been chipped and nevertheless painted over at the factory like the damage didn't exist. This was not the fault of an extremely reliable dealer, who additionally eats the cost of shipping. Not happy with that piece, but thinking it was not badly enough flawed to send it back and generate additional shipping costs, I ordered a second El Morro piece from a dealer in St. Charles, MO. It arrived today, with a very evident factory generated chip in the same balustrade---in a different place---which again had been painted over by their evidently blind and uncaring staff, with, as well, a couple of conical roofs on the small turrets whose molds were incompletely filled, leaving little gaps in their edges. Again, this puts me in the position of having to pay the postage to return the piece and to pay the postage for a replacement piece, since the flaws are not the dealer's fault. I requested both pieces unsigned specifically to reduce the handling of them...a futile exercise, apparently! This is precisely the reason why I despise the whole notion of special events, which necessitate one's obtaining the pieces without the benefit of inspecting them first. I have received, in the past, three damaged pieces from Lighthouse Depot, who was not at fault for the damage. In one, the power pack was not placed in its special compartment in the styrofoam liner but was packed loose in the same area with the lighthouse tower, decapitating the lantern during shipment. When I received my event piece last year, the tower rocked back and forth and there were cracks in the paint. My dealer had to request a replacement, of course.

Since Harbour Lights has increasingly abandoned the notion of a carefully checked products, I am becoming hard pressed to justify maintaining a collection of their pieces. The prospect of seeing all the cracked and bent struts in the upcoming Galveston Jetty piece nearly makes my stomach heave. Collecting Harbour Lights was supposed to be an activity of pleasure and anticipation. Any more, it is becoming one of dread and disappointment. The actual product--- when one can get a good, intact, unflawed example---is still well done, but the execution and delivery processes are undermining the whole business.