Quick flicks: Cigarette-lighter collectors converge on Las Vegas

Thursday, June 13, 2002 | 8:26 a.m.

Judith Sanders keeps 5,000 cigarette lighters in her home.

That is more than twice the population of her small town of Quitman, Texas.

Whenever Sanders attends a collectible lighter convention and sees a lighter she might want to have, she simply closes her eyes.

That way, Sanders said recently during a phone interview from her home, "I can picture one shelf and remember if I have that lighter."

It is likely Sanders will do just that when On the Lighter Side, an international lighter club, convenes this week for its biennial convention.

The convention, open to the public, is expected to draw a couple hundred of the group's 900 members with vintage, novelty and designer lighters in tow.

Free appraisals will be offered to the public, and thousands of lighters will be for sale.

"You will see everything from the $5 lighters to the $5,000 lighters," Sanders, founder and secretary of On the Lighter Side, said.

Some members will bring lighters to display. Others will swap stories.

There is plenty to talk about in the world of lighters.

Lighters' designs have documented history, paid homage to popular culture, thrust forth politicians, promoted sports teams and beheld international landmarks.

They are vintage, novel, classic and clever.

They are family heirlooms, military tokens, novelty items and, of course, a smoker's good friend.

They are musical, decorative and elegant.

"To me, lighter-collecting is like studying the universe," said Larry Tolkin, a longtime lighter collector from Westport, Conn., and member of OTLS. "And the universe is always expanding.

"There is always something new to learn," he said. "That's how it is with lighters. New stuff just shows up all the time rare pieces that people have never seen before.

"Some of these lighters are one-of-a-kind pieces," Tolkin added. "Some of them are miniature works of art."

Tolkin has about 3,000 lighters in his collection. He has been collecting art deco, hand-crafted enamel lighters, among others, for 20 years.

"The heydey of lighters were the 1920s and 1930s," Tolkin said. "That was back when smoking was the gentlemanly thing to do. I call it the golden age of lighters."

Though today smoking is less appealing to the masses (and lighter collectors, for that matter), its byproducts ashtrays, lighters and cigarette cases remain popular.

"They just don't make them like they used to," Tolkin said, referring to the lighters of yore.

Tolkin will bring to the convention his handcrafted, enamel, pocket-sized lighters made by Dunhill, an English company known for its exquisite lighters.

Other collectors will bring just about anything that comes in the shape of a lighter, including rarities.

"There will be gold, outside-hinge, mid-1930s Zippo lighters," Tolkin said, explaining that such lighters (valued at $25,000) were made with a hinge connecting the top of the lighter to the bottom on the outside of the case, rather than inside.

"There are only two of these lighters in the world," Tolkin added. "One of them belonged to Buddy Ebsen," of "The Beverly Hillbillies" fame.

Additionally, Ronson-brand art deco lighters from the 1930s priced at more than $10,000 will be featured at the convention, as well as lighters that were made during the 1800s.

Collectible lighters are graded on operating condition, surface condition, general wear and tear and whether the lighter has missing parts.

In some cases, signs of use is considered an enhancement if a lighter has an interesting history.

A good example would be Zippo's World War II black-crackle lighters. Because of a shortage of metals during World War II, Zippo lighters were made of porous steel and a black-crackle finish, into which troops would inscribe names of their fellow soldiers.

The inscriptions on such lighters are valuable, Tolkin said, "Especially if it's a good story."

Dunhill, Cartier, Dupont and Evans enamel lighters are among some of the high-end lighters that were made. Evans, which was based in Massachusets, stopped manufacturing lighters in the 1960s.

But Tolkin and Sanders said that Zippo, with its lifetime guarantee, is the most popular lighter in the world for collectors.

"If you have a good collection of Zippos you have a pictoral history of our country," Sanders said.

The road lighter traveled

Sanders' first lighter was given to her as a gift in 1965 from a friend who was flying military command trips. The lighter was bought in Germany and made of sterling silver and mother-of-pearl.

"I didn't want to lose it so I set it on a shelf," Sanders said. "Then he brought me another and I didn't want to lose that. So I set it on a shelf."

About five years later, while at an estate sale, Sanders spotted a lighter in the shape of a tiny pistol. The lighter had been made in occupied Japan during the period from 1942-53 when Allied forces occupied the country.

"That was the beginning of my real collecting," Sanders said. "After that I started going to estate sales, garage sales.

"You see," she said, "back then everybody smoked."

Today Sanders' collection includes enamel lighters, cigarette cases that double as lighters, pocket-watch lighters and figural lighters that come in the shape of King Edward and D'Artagnan, considered the fourth Musketeer, among other characters.

She owns lighters shaped as a television, jukebox, reel-to-reel tape player and a gramophone (an old phonograph). She also has small animal-shaped lighters and two display cases of European pocket lighters.

"Some people only collect Zippos," Sanders said. "Some people only collect Ronson. I, unfortunately, collect all of them. I have huge display cases, wall hangings, small cases.

"I have lighters all around my home. What's the point in having them if you can't look at them?"

Friends in flame

Sanders founded On the Lighter Side in 1984 after she met another collector from New York City, who posted an ad in a Dallas newspaper that said he was looking for Dunhill lighters.

She wrote the collector a letter. He called her. They talked lighters for a while. Then he suggested she start a club.

By the time the club's first newsletter was published that year there were three members (Sanders had also met an antique shop owner in Dallas who was collecting musical lighters).

"Now we have members in 12 countries," she said. The group has been meeting in Las Vegas every other year for 16 years.

"The first year after eBay started was the worst show we ever had as far as attendance," she said, referring to the auction website that was founded in 1995 and became a popular site for people buying and selling relics from the past, including lighters. "But that wore off."

One member, she said, complained in a letter: "I can't call eBay, I can't share my stories with a company. I need to come to a lighter convention."

The positive side to eBay is that it has created new lighter collectors, Tolkin said.

"What people are talking about is eBay," Tolkin said. "EBay has a tremendous impact on collections and shows. Ebay is giving everybody an understanding of what's rare."

But conventions, such On the Lighter Side's event, unite the collectors and their stories in a way that eBay can't, Sanders said.

"We're a fun group of people."

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