Glass floats, once in practical use among fishermen to keep their nets above water, have long been admired and collected by beachcombers. Many once washed ashore along the Oregon Coast from Japan.

Now, with glass replaced by buoyant plastic on fishing vessels, they’re a rare find.

Or they would be, if not for the thousands that Lincoln City scatters each year between the beach embankment and high tide line.

In June, the city’s Finders Keepers program, which has been hiding the glass floats along 7 miles of shoreline near Siletz Bay since 1999, announced its latest drop — 128 blue glass floats commissioned by the Marie Lamfrom Charitable Foundation, in memory of what would have been Lamfrom’s 128th birthday.

Lamfrom, with her husband, Paul, was a founder of the Columbia Sportswear company in 1938 after immigrating to Portland from Nazi Germany.

For each of the blue glass floats found through the end of July, the Lamfrom foundation will donate funds to a coastal nonprofit assigned to that float. Two have been assigned to the Liberty Theatre in Astoria.

Floats in the Finders Keepers program are made by a rotating group of coastal artists. This year’s float collection is being crafted by a group of nearly two dozen artists from nine studios, mostly in Lincoln City and Newport. One of this year’s artists is Claude Kurtz, of Astoria’s Fernhill Glass Studio.

Those who find a float are asked to report it via the Explore Lincoln City website, and as the name suggests, can take it home.