Irish Lighthouses John Eagle Eyeries Beara West Cork

Collectors Corner

If you are collecting John Eagle postcards, maybe missing one or seeking a particular card, then this is the web page for you. A directory page that lists the places that might be of interest you on the overall site.


Original #2	Next #2	2C	2D	2E

Above are several different versions of # 2 The Fastnet and below is 2F the current postcard

The Irish Lighthouse Series of postcards was started in 1994 with the release of numbers 1 to 12. I did two postcards to begin with, Roancarrig #1 and Fastnet # 2. 2000 of each. They came out in February 1994, then a few weeks later I produced 3 to 11, and in July #12. These first 12 postcards were 400 gsm in weight and were printed in Cumbria by Abacus. In 1995 numbers 13 to 25 were printed in Dublin by Betaprint, also some of the biog selling postcards between 1 and 12. These cards have a matt finish to them. Towards the end of 1995 the postcards were printed by Graham and Sons in Omagh, Co. Tyrone and they are printed by them to this day. Along the way other printers have been used, for instance 25C was made in Letterkenny and a version of 3A was printed by Walsh in Castleisland.

Orinally the idea was to make one postcard of each lighthouse but that proved difficult when I had more than one good photograph a certain lighthouse. The sensible thing would have been to put a letter after the number, which I eventually did. Alas, before I thought of this idea I was just putting in a new number, like 2 and 3 for Fastnet, 9 and 19 for Skellig Michael. I have thought of renumbering the set but that would complicate things far too much so please forgive my numbering and enjoy collecting the cards.

Collectors of my postcards will be pleased to know that if you bought off me from the very start a complete collection of the original 12 with the blue fish logo on the back is now rare. There are not many of these left. Even I struggled to find a complete set of these original postcards. I printed 3000 of each of numbers 3 to 11 in 1994 and 2000 of 1, 2 and 12. In 1995 I printed 5000 of numbers: 2 (looking down on the Fastnet helipad) 3, 4, 6B, 8, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15 (with wrong county on back) 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24 and 25. After that the usual print run was 1000 except for the Fastnet and the Mizen, and sometimes the Hook. I dumped several thousand of the Hook with the wrong county on the back, my fault, I made the mistake I put Waterford instead of Wexford and found myself with 5000 postcards I could not sell. I put many round the base of my fruit trees to keep weeds down.

For the most part I do not tamper with my pictures, but when I took the shot of Dingle a couple of years back I felt there was one too many houses in the background. I removed one in Photoshop, and then I thought 'what the heck' and removed all of them. I call it artistic licence. The boat was around at the time, I just 'brought' it back into play