By Ben Marks — Fire, as everyone in the Western world knows, was bestowed upon humankind by the Greek Titan Prometheus, who stole it from the god of thunderbolts and lightning, the very, very frightening Zeus. Subsequently, throughout most of recorded history—and presumably everything that came before—people organized their lives around their ability to rekindle a flickering flame, lest they suffer from cold in the winter or the digestive distress of eating too much raw meat. Author and collector Ian...

A Boy's Matchbox Collection

By Jim Linderman — Matchbooks are certainly one of the most-collected paper ephemera items. Even as smoking declines, the book of matches remains as common as a coin and familiar as a photo. Far less common, however, are the matchboxes—the wooden, sliding cases which held stick matches. Approaching extinction today (except in upscale hotels and bars) wooden matchboxes were created in quantities rivaling postage stamps, and there is an active group of collectors today seeking scarce examples. “Phillumenists”...

Where There's Smoke There's a Vintage Cigarette Lighter

By Maribeth Keane — At the very beginning, my interest in lighters was about the mechanism. I had my first lighter when I was 14. I saved up my nickels and dimes. I grew up in Oakland, and bought my first cigarette lighter because I thought it was way cool. I didn’t smoke and I didn’t set fire to things. I just thought the lighter was really a beautiful piece of equipment and the whole idea of being able to push down your thumb and get a flame just really caught my fancy. I was attracted to the function of...

Collecting Vintage Cigarette Lighters

By Eric Beeson — Cigarette lighter collecting is a hobby that never gets boring. Just by browsing eBay auctions for ten minutes, for example, I recently found a lighter shaped like a lion’s head, one made of jade and gold, and an electric lighter in the shape of a woman’s face that hangs on the wall. A flame we can carry in our pockets is something that we take for granted, but it was much harder to make fire in earlier times. The match wasn’t invented until about 1805, and early matches were expensive...