My Aladdin Lamp Collection: Model 23A Lehman's Exclusive Cobalt Bullseye (2013-2014)

 My New Lamp

Finding this lamp has made me so happy! I feel like it was a twice-in-a-lifetime chance. The first time would have been purchasing it at Lehman's when it was for sale back in 2013 and 2014. It was an exclusive made just for Lehman's! Unfortunately, I was not an obsessed collector at that time. Had I been, I would have snatched one up right away. Since that time, I have never seen one "in the wild" as they say. I have never seen one posted in the Facebook groups or at any of the Gatherings, for sale or for show. I thought I would never see one anywhere, and if I did it would not be for sale or I would somehow miss out on it in an auction or something. I don't know how many were made, but I have to think that it is no more than 200, but could possibly be even 100. I wish there was some way to find out, but it's not in any of our records. 

Totally out of the blue, I happened to see someone post it on one of the Aladdin Facebook groups. He was asking if anyone else had one. At the time, he didn't mention that he was planning to sell it. About a week later, I was even more surprised to see that he WAS selling it, along with a couple other lamps. By the time I saw the post, it had been up for at least a couple of hours. I messaged him right away and said I was very interested. I felt like the price he was asking was fair (only slightly more than what we had it listed for back in 2013/2014). It was even still brand new, never used and he still had the original box! I sent payment and he shipped it the next day! Thankfully, he double-boxed it with plenty of packing and it arrived in perfect condition.

The lamp is even more stunning in person! I only wish we could have more of them made. Several years ago, we requested the mold be sent to us from China. It was sent over on a container with other inventory and was said to have arrived at our Dalton warehouse. Unfortunately, no one claims to have seen it or knows anything about its arrival. China is certain it was shipped in the container of pallets we received. If it was, whoever received them probably had no idea what the thing was, and who knows what happened to it. It could have been discarded immediately, or stashed away anywhere in the dozens of rows of racking. When the warehouse moved to Hartville, we did end up finding things we didn't know we had that were Aladdin-related.

We got so hopeful about it being on one of those pallets, but unfortunately, it was not there. Again, if it was "discovered" by someone, it was likely that person had no idea what it was and it was likely tossed for scrap 😢.