This thread kind of reminds me of the game you play by placing a group of people in a circle and one person starts by telling a joke to the person on their left. Each person in turn tells the person on their left the same joke and by the time it gets back to the beginning, the story is SO DIFFERENT!
I do concur that by NOT saying what the changes might be to the Collector's Society, Harbour Lights opens the door to all kinds of speculation from 'higher dues' to 'close the doors.'
You're all welcome to speculate, of course; that's one of the purposes of these Collector Forums (and it's a free country, too.)
I've repeated this story a couple of times to some of the people at Harbour Lights:
People COMPLAIN because they love you, not because they hate you.
If you go to a restaurant and the first time you're there, the service or the food is bad, you don't complain. You don't go back and you probably tell many friends you wouldn't recommend the place.
If, on the other hand, you go to a restaurant 10 times and on the 11th visit the food or the service is bad, you DO complain.
You complain about the situation because 1) You know they can do better 2) You like the place and want to return and even, perhaps because 3) You've 'invested' yourself into this restaurant. You consider yourself part of the reason the restaurant is succeeding.
The people who gather in the Collector Forums do so because we like Harbour Lights, the company and the product. We've got money and time invested in our collecting. We've made friends around the products and the real lighthouses. We've travelled to meet some of these friends and visit lighthouses and to attend Harbour Lights' events.
We don't want these things we like to go away. And so, while we don't have any real 'ownership' in the company, we do have a kind of 'investment' in the company and its products.
And so we speculate, and we 'worry' and we try to figure out 'what this really means.'
For the last 10 years, the Collectors Society been a great bargain and there have been some nice Society Exclusive pieces to buy and Membership Gift pieces as well.
Let's see if Harbour Lights can speed up the announcement of what changes they are planning for the Collectors Society.
