Wow you people are good.
I agree with all that has been said.

I have California, Canadian and Malaysian made Harbour Lights and they all have the wire.
The only Nylon type lightning rod that I have is a replacement that I got from Harbour Lights back in 1999. It looks just like the one on Ebay.

I believe it was Rutherford that said in one of his books that Harbour Lights started out with the wire and after many problems with breaking HL started using nylon. But as I said before the only Nylon I have seen are replacement rods by HL. I think it is probable that when HL discovered a lightning rod problem and they started replacing them with Nylon but the factories never switched over to nylon. It is possible that some of those little stubby rods you see on the tail end of production of the lightning rods may be Nylon but I don’t have one to examine.

Does anyone have a lightning rod that looks like a nylon or a bristle?

With what HCS said I would lean toward the Coquille not being a Paint Sample but a standard Paint variation for numbers somewhere around 290 and 380.