Welcome to a new feature at Lighthouse Digest, a column on the ever-popular Harbour Lights lighthouse collectible.

Sweeping the country, has been a fascination of lighthouses. Maybe it's a romantic notion of the past, or just inquisitiveness of the men, women and children who lived the life of light keepers, and were such a large part of our seafaring heritage.

Harbour Lights has been able to capture an authentic representation of these historical structures. In this column we will explore this fascinating collectible line, looking into current primary issues, and replicas that are about to be released and of course we will be keeping you informed of approaching retirements.

Also, we will set our sails and venture into the new line, Anchor Bay, and learn how this unique line of lightships, tugboats, and sailboats, promises to be another very successful collectible that will give the nautical collector one more interesting facet of their collection.

Another area of popularity is the extremely bullish secondary market of retired Harbour Lights replicas. Some of these pieces are reselling for extraordinary values. Currently, a new release, Sanibel Island, Florida, has taken the country by storm, having been sold out prior to release. This replica, a limited edition size of 9500 had been distributed in small allotments to dealers throughout the USA, making the supply, less than the demand. This lighthouse replica has appeared on the secondary market at nearly double its original issue price of $120.00. The great anticipation of this release and dealers having a pre-sold list of orders from collectors waiting for this introduction, has cleaned most of the shelves of this unique light, but an astute collector will take this as a challenge to search the primary market. It is always advised with retired ights to exhaust all resources of the primary market before making a purchase on the secondary market.

I am pleased to be writing this column, as it will give me a forum to share my experience and insight with you, the collector. This information will enhance your enjoyment of collecting Harbour Lights Collectibles, which I find to be one of the most astonishing nautical collectibles of our time.

So, come on board, let's have some fun and enjoy the journey together.

Matt Rothman is a free lance writer and owner of Lighthouse Trading Company which specializes in the Harbour Lights secondary market. He can be contacted at 112 Elio Circle, Limerick, PA 19468 or by calling him at 610-409-9336.

This story appeared in the October 1997 edition of Lighthouse Digest Magazine. The print edition contains more stories than our internet edition, and each story generally contains more photographs - often many more - in the print edition. For subscription information about the print edition, click here.

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