Review of the limited edition Coquille secondary market value.

I thought I would bring back some of my old research information that many have forgotten or most likely never heard of.

The LE Coquille is still one of the big favorites of Harbour Light collectors and it is hard to find even with Ebay, One may ask why is the coquille so hard to find when it had a production of 1138? There are many Harbour Lights out there with production numbers way less than the coquille and they can be had for under $200. What makes a coquille so hard to find and valuable? Of course we all know that the price is dictated by supply verses the demand. The Coquille being a collectable, collectors should have scooped it up right away when it retired.

Well it didn’t happen that way. The coquille was an unpopular lighthouse as sales were concern, so when HL realized that the mold was incorrect having 6 sides instead of the actual eight, they decided in Feb 1993 just to retire the lighthouse. Harbour Lights was getting relatively popular with the Great lakes & New England lights of 92 and the southern Bells for 93. Harbour Lights popularity was growing but the only way a collector knew about HL or what was going on was thru their dealer. The early retirement of the coquille was reaching collectors by word of mouth from sales reps to dealers to collectors. For those that had registered their lighthouses were starting to receive newsletter in the fall of 93 from Harbour lights but even then it wasn’t until the winter of 94 until the legacy announced the retirement of the Coquille, over one and 1/2 years after it happened.

After retirement the Coquille gradually reached a secondary market value of $200 with a continuous climb until over a year and a half later it topped out at $1000 by the 1994 Christmas season. Even if collectors knew about the Coquille retirement it wasn’t till 1995 that collectors could actually try and find them at retail. Yes, there were some Secondary market dealers available but collectors in general didn’t know where to find them and if they did most collectors didn’t feel comfortable buying through them or paying the marked-up price.

Then the big break through happened. In the spring of 1995 Harbour Lights offered their first society kit and inside the kit was the list of all Harbour Light dealers. Also by 1995 Harbour lights popularity was busting out of the seams with new collectors that wanted to catch up and complete their collection. This was the year that collectors started manning their phone books and hunted down at retail the hard to find Portland head, Southeast Block, St Augustine, Cape Hatteras and of course the Coquille River.

This meant that the coquille had four years to be absorbed into the population, so when the new wave of collectors came about to hunt down the coquille, it was already hidden in the hands of novice and tourist that didn’t know what they had or die-hard established collectors that knew but would never sell. Another important factor was that Bill Younger started the sales routes in his area of the west coast so that most of the early coquille would have been sold in California, Oregon and Washington. I would guess that at least the first 250 of HL 101 thru HL 117 were sold to established dealers in this area. By 1995 Harbour Lights had a good dealership network across the country with the heavy collectors of the late 1990’s in the East Coast and Great Lakes regions. Allot of collectors had large phone bills and even made it harder for the rest to find the rare ones, which in turn, drove up the prices. Besides collectors a rush of Secondary market dealers appeared adding to madness. A Harbour Light market was created that we thought would never end and the value of the Coquille River kept escalating until it reached its peak in 1998 at $2800.

The following also added to the desire of collectors to have the Coquille.
1. It had a neat story about how it was made with six sides instead of the eight.
2. It was a missing link for collectors to have them all. Even though know a days most collectors have given up on collecting them all, back in the 90’s it was feasible and very popular to have them all, since there were only around a 100 then.
3. The coquille has had great advertising. If a collector were going to know anything about the early HL’s most likely it would be the story about the coquille. This is the best well known rare Lighthouse produced by Harbour Lights.
4. Of course the big driver for collecting the coquille is to have something that you cannot obtain easily.

I speculate that many of the coquilles have either been thrown away or still stuffed away in the Attics or garages of homes in Washington, California and Oregon. The rest are in the hands of collectors that will not part with them. It is sad to say but the only time you see the coquille for sale is when a long time collector dies and it is sold off by the heirs or if a collector needs money to pay off medical bills.

With all the collectables prices bottoming out the coquille is one of the few that has been able to weather through. I would put the value of a coquille with its box at $800 to $950 and I would not consider $1200 to high for the asking.