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A couple zippos and a pack of smokes off Air Force One


Rylan
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Found these this past weekend. I read online they stopped giving guests a pack of cigarettes in 1988 on AF1.

 

One is a zippo, the other is a 'corona'. These must be hard to authenticate, but they were neat and looked legit so I went for it. They came from a big collection of Zippo type lighters, nothing else is known.

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You know the bad thing about Vietnam Zippos is that about 99% of them are current made fakes that come out of Vietnam. They burn them with a torch to age them, toss them around to beat them up, and then they sell them mostly on ebay. Sometimes you see them at gunshows or military shows but they all pretty much look the same. The Kent State one is a very common one. I believe they are both fake.

 

Jump over to ebay and look at what they are selling and compare them to the ones you purchased and also go to the Zippo website and look there. I've been burned and I would guess there are others on here that have been burned.

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I have a few real ones and there is a few sites on the web that can date the case by the slash markings and stamping. But ya there are so many fakes on Ebay now they are starting to reach flea markets and shops

 

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I have a few real ones and there is a few sites on the web that can date the case by the slash markings and stamping. But ya there are so many fakes on Ebay now they are starting to reach flea markets and shops

 

Doesn't change the fact that you can get a real Zippo and add fake engravings.

The lighter itself could easily be real (or fake) and the engravings could just be doctoring it up.

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The Vietnam Zippo, real or not sadly you just can't say simply because there are so many fakes as others have pointed out.

 

The other lighter seems legit to my gut. The unit at Camp Chickamauga Japan in 1952 was 187th RCT (Airborne)...if someone wanted to fake it, why not cover the thing with 187th RCT insignia and use a real ZIPPO instead of a Corona. Also, the front looks like a PX lighter with the generic FECOM patch...while the back looks like it was done with a GI stamping set. Can't say 100%, but it doesn't scream fake to me. As stated before, I'd see if there was any way to tell the age of just the lighter guts/cases on both.

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