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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Shangas, post: 170471, member: 360&quot;]What we have here is an old school lift-arm lighter.</p><p><br /></p><p>Not an oldschool lift-arm lighter.</p><p><br /></p><p>An old school lift-arm lighter.</p><p><br /></p><p>Literally!</p><p><br /></p><p>It was pissing with rain today so instead of going to the flea-market, I went to what was advertised at a local town hall as a &#039;retro and collectibles fair&#039;.</p><p><br /></p><p>It turned out to be nothing more than a bunch of middle-aged fogeys flogging Matchbox toy cars and countless folders packed full of old-fashioned football trading cards, boxes of costume jewelry and cheap bric-a-brac junk.</p><p><br /></p><p>I began to seriously think that I&#039;d done nothing but waste the $5 admission fee, and was heading out, when I found this:</p><p><br /></p><p><img src="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/81/21/67/81216794ec065638a78fc1fc328cb391.jpg" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /></p><p><br /></p><p>For those who don&#039;t recognise the shape, it&#039;s an old-fashioned lift-arm cigarette lighter, of the kind used around 1890-1920. It&#039;s nickel-plated brass and it was pretty grubby when I got it.</p><p><br /></p><p>Admittedly, it&#039;s nothing fancy. It&#039;s an antique cigarette lighter. There&#039;s billions of them in the world.</p><p><br /></p><p>What made me buy it was the crest on the front, which is the coat of arms of my old highschool: Scotch College, in Melbourne.</p><p><br /></p><p>Not to blow my own horn, but I went to Scotch for over ten years, and when I graduated (again, over ten years ago!), I remember there being all kinds of school-emblazoned memorabilia to buy. T-shirts, caps, cufflinks, mugs, glasses, books, ties, pens, ash-trays and God knows what else!</p><p><br /></p><p>But I&#039;ve NEVER seen a cigarette lighter, especially one this old, with my school crest on it! I was dumbfounded, and I absolutely had to have it!</p><p><br /></p><p>The base is marked with the name of tobacconist&#039;s shop, which traded in Melbourne from 1854 until probably 1960 or 1965. So the lighter has got to be pretty bloody old!</p><p><br /></p><p><img src="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/72/99/c8/7299c803f6fe0ad21104622ce8d2b11c.jpg" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /></p><p><br /></p><p>When I got it home, I pulled the lighter apart, gave it a bath in the ultrasonic cleaner, reassembled it, rubbed off the grime, and then I put in a new flint, juiced it up and after waiting for the fuel to soak through, two or three flicks of the flint-wheel got it sparking and lighting! I&#039;m so excited!</p><p><br /></p><p>I removed the old cotton wadding inside the lighter and replaced it with fresh wadding, and I also used a pair of pliers to straighten out the extinguisher-arm (it was bent slightly and kept catching on the flint-wheel). It now opens and snaps shut cleanly. </p><p><br /></p><p>I have no clear idea of how old this lighter is, apart from the fact that lift-arm lighters are pretty damn old. I have sent an email and photographs of the lighter to the school archivist, and await his reply.</p><p><br /></p><p>Here it is, all juiced up and blazing away:</p><p><br /></p><p><img src="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/80/0b/46/800b46d7369fd03647e0e04782a5e975.jpg" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" />[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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