Are you going to eat with that silver spoon or cut steak with your samurai sword as it lays on the fine china you’ve been accumulating all these yrs? It’s not likely but even so some pursuits are wholesome enough for purely ornamental reasons. Cigarette lighters are not useless but what if you put together the greatest collection of cigarette lighters in the world only to have it separated for a pittance simply because you family is in a hurry? Maybe there are ways the collection can be memorialized virtually while still providing the financial support for your family and return on investment you have always hoped.
These Are Practical, Real Life Tools
The appeal of being able to put it in my pocket, carry around and use it was the greatest motivation drawing me toward the cigarette lighter hobby. Jax Teller used his Zippo often, he didn’t just set it on a shelf with a bunch of others.
I am a big sports fan or at least I used to be. When I was a kid and young man I collected baseball cards and sports action figures. Thinking about this as I write rings 1 Corinthians 13:11, “When I was a child…but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” Somewhere along the way those little items I’d once coveted lost their appeal to me.
There are plenty of folks out there that never lit a single lighter in their collection. To each his own. It is very important to me that while I do not use every lighter in my collection every day, every lighter has to be in working order. These are usable tools that I employ for their intended purpose every day.
More Than Ornamental
If it’s not just for looks though and these gadgets that we accumulate have value beyond the number of dollars they can fetch in an Ebay auction, it’s a shame they not get used or passed along and appreciated while still maintaining some semblance of the achievement or effort required to bring such pieces together in the first place.
I was offered a very large collection that I couldn’t possibly afford. I was even offered a healthy sum if I could only locate a buyer for the collection. I visited with the man and his family and offered to sell it for them on consignment but he really wanted to keep the whole thing together.
As my eyes roamed around his place that afternoon and every time I have thought about him since, I sensed that his work should have been documented in a more thorough fashion. Sure, he’d been mentioned in a book or two, helped untold collectors with their specialties over the yrs and held lighters that you and I only dream about.
He wanted what most collectors want: to get the most financial value out of his lighters(for the good of his family) while keeping them all together. What I have conceived and am proposing today is to consign your collection to me, let me sell them for you for optimal value while at the same time creating a virtual memorial of your collection that can be appreciated by anyone interested, even long after you’re gone!
The Right Size
Size matters in this case because I am attempting something I have never done before and I have been really clear about the need to take my mental health seriously.
There’s much work involved with every listing we post at DependableFlame.com and I am using those listings as the basis for how I would create the site/pages/page for this collection memorial. By taking the collection on consignment(we would obviously come to agreement on time, value and other pertinent information beforehand) and listing the lighters for sale in my store they will each have a minimum of twelve different photos taken.
Now, we(you and I together) may decide to sell certain lighters in groups if for one or any of a multitude of reasons they may not be suitable for maximum financial returns such as blocked flint tubes, missing components, wear or whatever the case may be.
Understanding those caveats, individual lighters being sold also get a feature video of their own along with the listing write-up and research and background work that come with each video we publish.
A One Time Offer
While I am keen to explore avenues which would expand or enhance our ability to be profitable, more helpful, streamline our process, help others show off their collections and countless other notions, I can’t promise that I’ll ever make this offer again. I can’t even promise that I’ll ever encounter a collection and owner who are a fit to accept for such an experimental project.
This is an idea that has been floating around my head for a few yrs now and I have just been looking for the right opportunity to try it out. The size of the collection, the presence of a deadline and the expectation of money the collection will fetch are probably the three most important factors for consideration.
There are ways to make certain you extract maximum value for an item when you list it. Some of those methods may not be compatible with selling the collection quickly if the estate requires liquidation within a certain time frame.
Maybe the best way to think about it is you can’t have your cake and eat it too. It is not very likely you are going sell the collection fast AND extract the maximum value. You will suffer on one end or the other. Accordingly, for me to accept a consignment on deadline would almost certainly require that collection to be small.
What Are You Going To Do With Yours?
We can discuss the depth and breadth of coverage(number of photos, videos, write-ups) you would like your collection to receive along with the style in which they are presented. You can check out any of the individual lighter brand pages on the Archived Lighter Listings page to see the layout we use to document the lighters we sell at DependableFlame.com.
I’m not the most artistic or flamboyant person out there, I tend to let the lighters do the talking. I don’t figure anyone is tuning in to YouTube every morning to hear me yammer about my opinion so much as they just want to see some cool lighters.
If you have a collection and you have been pondering, “What is going to happen to my lighters when I die?” I could possibly even help YOU sell the collection now and memorialize them in a way that your family and others can appreciate virtually in perpetuity.
If we can’t come to agreement on consignment, consider memorializing and selling your collection yourself. I have developed some methods and use some tools that I would be glad to share with you. There really isn’t much to building a website as long as you have a vision for what you are trying to create. As I mentioned earlier, it is a lot of work but I have streamlined and automated much of the process which takes off some of the burden of the work.
You Gotta Come Along
We publish new video to YouTube weekday mornings @8am central. Please check out the channel, subscribe and tell all your friends!
If you are interested in consigning and memorializing your collection, send a direct message on Facebook. You can post photos of your collection so I have an idea what we are looking at and we can go from there. Please Follow and Like the DependableFlame Facebook page and group while you are there!
We also appreciate every comment below this or any other article at DependableFlame.com. We would love to hear your questions, suggestions or talk about consigning your collection.
You can reach us via Ebay message at any time.
Until next time…
I remember those lighters! The men in my family all smoked at one time, some of them cigars, some of them cigarettes. It was not known in the early days the physical ramifications of smoking, and was not only socially acceptable, but the type of cigar or cigarette AS WELL AS THE QUALITY OF YOUR LIGHTER was totally a status thing! I loved the fact you have some rare, older versions that are difficult to even locate today! Best of Luck in your lighter collection
Thank you Angela for stopping by. I think by the time I came along they pretty much knew that smoking tobacco was bad for you but no one cared because they all did it anyway! I can still see images of my Dad in my mind, his package of cigarettes rolled up in the short sleeve of his white t-shirt. That was the norm back then and he wasn’t the only one. I get the status part of it too, that’s one of the reasons i advocate for the use of refillable lighters over the disposable plastic junk you see available today ✌️
I found your article about lighter collecting very interesting. I had never thought about lighters as a collectible item before, but your article shed light on the many different types of lighters available and the history behind them. I appreciate the way you emphasize the importance of preserving these items and the memories associated with them. Your website is a great resource for anyone interested in lighter collecting and the unique opportunity it presents to memorialize one’s efforts. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and experience with us!
It’s funny to me Murry because I hear that same sentiment all the time, “I didn’t know that people collect old lighters” or “I didn’t realize these things were so valuable.” The truth is these tiny little machines are the perfect kind of items for people to collect because they are small, lightweight and don’t take up much room. Even stored in boxes they do not take up much space and I think most folks would be shocked to learn how much some collectors are willing to pay for such items. After all, they aren’t making vintage lighters anymore!