The Collectors
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Thursday 27 October 2005
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Ivan Rendall is this week’s passionate collector. He has the biggest collection of cigarette lighters in the Northern Territory, if not the whole of Australia.
He has almost 2800 of them - not bad for a man who doesn’t even smoke! It all started 20 years ago with a “nude lady” lighter. But, sadly, this unique collection is under threat!
All Ivan's lighters are displayed in cabinets. It was 1986 when he really started to collect lighters. Wherever he was working at the time he would pick them up and clean them and eventually built showcases to store them all. He collected the lighters from restaurants, supermarkets, take away shops, service stations, hotels and clubs - just to name a few!
All his friends and family would pass lighters onto Ivan and he even has strangers contacting him offering him their lighters! Sometimes he finds people have just droppped them off in his letterbox.
He has many novelty lighters and also the smallest and largest lighter available. The James Bond gun lighter is Ivan's favourite, it is the most expensive in his series as it is gold plated and came from the USA.
Ivan's wife has threatened to dump all the lighters and fill the cabinets with glass and crystal wear! She wants them out of the lounge room at least!
In 1932 Zippo manufactured the first wind proof lighter. 30% of Zippo lighters are sold to non smoking lighter collectors.
In 1973 BIC released the disposable cigarette lighter - they currently sell 4 million lighters per day!
