- In the suburban town of Richfield, I met Bob Rosenberg who showed me Minnesota's largest collection of zippo lighters.

What advice do you have for anyone that wants to, to start collecting zippo lighters?

- Well, the key thing is, is to educate oneself so you know what the value would be of them.

So you don't overpay, you don't buy something that you know, you, you, you don't really want.

So you really have to learn about them.

And the best way to do that is probably to get a book about them or get on the internet, learn about them, and then you'll become well-informed and you can, you know, decide, you know, how, how many you wanna buy and how much you wanna spend for them.

- Are they costly?

- They can be.

I have, I have purchased some very, very nice ones for as little as $1, but I have also spent as much as a thousand dollars for a single zippo.

- No kidding.

I imagine like anything, the rarity of it, the condition of it all plays a role in how much a person spends.

- That is correct, because some of 'em, they're not just all made out of chrome plated brass.

Some of 'em are, are sterling silver and some of 'em are gold, like 14 karat or 18 karat gold.

And those, those could be very spendy.

Doug, here's some examples of different zippo lighters with advertising and different motifs on them.

There's TWA and Lockheed on that lighter.

That would be from the 1950s.

Really.

They were advertising both the airplane and the airline.

Here's Sheraton Hotels right over here.

That's still around Maxwell House Coffee up there.

Henry J Automobiles, that's from the mid 1950s.

Don't hear about them anymore.

- So you have all of her tractors.

- Right.

Here's an interesting one, says Season's greetings.

That one is, I think it was from the, the boss of a company and he gave them out to his employees.

Doug, this is an example of a zippo table lighter.

Now it doesn't say zippo on it, but it is a zippo lighter and it has advertising on it.

This has Winchester Western, which is a firearms company.

This would be, this would be from about the mid 1950s.

- Really.

It's got some weight to it, doesn't - It?

It it does, it was, it was intended to be on a table.

It, it didn't go in your pocket, obviously, - Obviously.

Yeah, but it's still really cool.

But it didn't say zip on it.

- No.

However ever it opened like this, and it has the zippo insert that's the same insert that's used on the pocket lighters.

And to fill the lighter, you would pull this out, of course, that you would pull it out and you would add lighter fluid in here and down in here.

And that's the way that the, these lighters are filled.

- Are the table lighters more desirable than the pocket lighters?

- I would, I would say they're, they're very desirable because they're very hard to find.

They are.

Okay.

They, they made m much less table lighters.

One reason is because it's heavy and they weren't as popular as the, as the pocket lighters.

Okay.

Doug, what we have here is a zippo gift package, which includes both the lighter, the flints and a can of fluid.

Now this was a complete set so you could fill it up and get it working immediately.

And this one, this particular one has advertising from Coca-Cola on it.

It includes the, the, the can of fluid.

There were flints in here, and now the Flints have deteriorated because they oxidize.

But this is a mint never lit lighter from 1956.

And that's one thing I should mention is that you can date these lighters by looking at the codes on the bottom.

Okay.

So, and this has got the old style can with the lead spout here.

So - Are the cans collectible too?

Yes, - They are.

The, the reason that they're quite rare is because when the can was empty, you generally discarded it.

So in this case, this can has never been opened, but it's hard to find the cans, the, the fluid cans.

Doug, there's another favorite zippo that I have here.

This one right here was given to me by the credit union that I belong to.

They knew of my passion for collecting zippos, so they had this one custom made by zippo for me, this is the only one like this in the world.

This is from 2020, so it's not super old, but it is quite valuable to me.

- No one else has - It.

No one else has this one.

- That makes it very special, doesn't - It?

It definitely does.

And it was very nice of the credit union to give me this as a gift.

This one is quite easy to date because it, it has the two codes on it.

One is for the month of the year.

This is h so it starts with January would be a, so you just go progressive from there.

And - Then I'm lost.

- And then the, the 20 is from 2020, - So that's really cool.

Yeah.

- Kind of a, a side aspect of collecting zippo lighters is collecting the fluid cans that the, that had the flammable fluid that you fill the lighter with.

They're kind of hard to find because once they're empty, most people discarded them.

This shelf right here is all zippo cans right here from various years, various eras.

And those are highly collected.

Also, - I notice you collect other than zippo as well.

- Yes.

Any lighter fluid cans are, are of interest to me.

- Bob, I'm looking at all your cans and there's one that just I'm drawn to and it's one right there in the middle.

The holiday can Oh, okay.

Can I see it?

- Absolutely.

I think I, I know why you like this one.

The fact that it's only 9 cents.

- That's exactly right.

I actually do like the holiday logo.

It reminds me of the old gas stations.

The sign growing up, we all went to holiday.

Right.

And that was the sign.

You don't see that today.

No, you don't.

That's a really cool can.

That is, and it's such a great shape too.

- It is - In the future, Bob, what happens to your collection?

- Well, that's a problem that the next generation is gonna have to deal with because I, I'm a, a dedicated collector and I have no intention of, of getting rid of any of my collection, so I'm not gonna worry about that.