“Got a light?”
Oh, how
famous that expression is, although it is not as common today as in the past.
But most
people are well aware of what a BIC is. BIC, by the way, is the largest lighter
manufacturer in the world. It claims to sell about 1.9 billion lighters a year.
That’s billion, not million.
Actually,
lighters are so common that we take them for granted. But it is amazing that
you can merely press a button and you can get a light. Presto! Lighters have
been around for about two hundred years.
The first
lighter was created by a German chemist Johann Dobereiner, and called
“Dobereiner’s Lamp”. His lighter used the highly explosive hydrogen, not
butane. It was a table lighter and was really a status symbol.
Most smokers
used matches until the flint lighter became popular. By 1908, the flint lighter
was small enough to fit inside a pocket.
Lighters
became increasingly more popular during World War I, as they were used by
soldiers to find their way in the dark. However, often the flare of matches
gave away soldiers’ positions, and many lives were lost.
By the
1920s, the flare issue was solved and smoking became extremely popular, as did
lighters. Flint wheel lighters were mass produced. Soon, the Zippo Company
began making lighters, as did Ronson. With more companies in the market, the
cost of lighters fell. Soon, other companies such as Dunhill, St. Dupont, and
Colibir were in the mix as well.
It was in
the 1930s that Ronson started using butane as a fuel, instead of naphtha which
was being used. Flint would still continue to be used, but was later replaced
by the piezoelectric spark. In the 1940s and 1950s high profile Hollywood
celebrities, as well as athletes, became endorser for cigarettes. As a result,
the popularity of lighters increased.
And with BIC
claiming that their sales are well over a billion a year, it seems that
lighters are not going away anytime soon.
Of course,
collectors became involved. If you were a smoker, and used lighters yourself,
you would undoubtable consider collecting vintage lighters yourself. Naturally,
if you had disposed of the lighters you had once used you would probably be
upset for doing so. But now you could try to find your type of lighters at
auction, even if you now had to pay several times the original cost. That’s a
hard lesson to learn. But you would not have known that lighters would become
such a collectible item. Some lighters were meant to be disposable, and that is
what you did when you were younger.
And vintage
lighters have become popular auction items, and have sold for a great deal of
money, especially if they had been owned by a high profile person. A few sales
of lighters will prove that point.
For example,
John Wayne used a Zippo lighter. In fact, his lighter with “Duke” engraved on
one side was sold at auction. The selling price? Over $3700. At auction time it
was not n working condition, but most collectors would not use it anyway.
The same
holds true for the lighter owned and used by President Kennedy. The lighter had
the initials of both President Kennedy and the First Lady. It sold for $3800.
A lighter
that Frank Sinatra gave as a gift in 1967 sold for over $4000. His name was
engraved on the lighter. As he had just recently gotten divorced from actress
Mia Farrow, her name was not on it.
A David Webb
enamel gold lighter sold for over $4000 as well. That lighter was 18 carat gold
and extremely desirable.
Of course,
lighters owned by high profile people are coveted by not only lighter
collectors but by presidential collectors, as in the case with the Kennedy
lighter, and pop culture collectors, as in the case of the lighters owned by
John Wayne and Frank Sinatra
Lighters
display very well, they are very lightweight, and can be very colorful.
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