A Molectric 88 in Gold Hobnail (James Bond 007 - The Man With The Golden Gun lighter part of the golden gun was based on this actual lighter body) was up for auction earlier today on eBay from Britain (first one I've seen for sale in a year and a half in that color and texture. Unfortunately, I had to bid on it with my phone from work and the slow interface compared to a PC has lost me bids before that jumped at the last second (more so than a browser anyway) and sure enough, it happened again. I should have bid a lot higher. It was at £12 ($15 US) and I bid £40 with about 15 seconds to go and it said too low, bid £50 or higher and I put £70 as fast as I could with the stupid phone web interface and then the "are you sure" crap and it had 2 seconds to go and didn't register fast enough and it sold for £55 ($69 USD + shipping + tax). I'm not sure it's really even worth that much, but they come up so rarely....
Obviously, more than one person knew it was from
The Man With The Golden Gun and were sniping at the last few seconds as I got no indication prior that it was jumping upward. Typically, even working Molectric 88s typically sell for $40 or less (it wasn't clear if this one worked for sure or not; it said "good shape but needs gas" or something like that which means there's a good chance it leaks or otherwise won't function. I just bought two recently fully serviced in near mint condition ($28 and $35 in Silver and Chrome, respectively as shown in the post two above plus a gold one in two stripe I bought many months earlier) so I'm sure that's why. The real lighter wasn't
actually in the movie (it was a prop made to look like that lighter body that assembled into the gun; there isn't room inside for a lighter and a bullet chamber) so it's not in high demand as some props are (like the Maltese Falcon lighter), but it obviously is in
some demand just the same and rarely comes up for sale. I should have realized sooner I wanted it more badly (mostly because I'm sick of waiting for one to come up for sale) and just bid higher to begin with. But hell, if you're going to spend into the hundreds range, it might be worth considering putting it towards one of those movie prop replicas of the actual full prop instead. I guess I'll keep an eye out for another one at some point.
There's a few lighters I'm looking for that come up very rarely like that which aren't necessarily terribly valuable lighters in general, but there's so few left or in circulation at least that it's a PITA just keeping an eye out, especially when people list lighters oddly sometimes (I've been able to buy several somewhat valuable Dunhills for at least 1/4 their eBay value (let alone from dealers or private sales) under bad listings that had no idea the model name or their actual value). "Dunhill lighter" turns up all kinds of non-specific hits compared to "Dunhill Unique" or "Dunhill Unique Sport", for example but sometimes that's all that's in the listing, but it's a pain to search through a few hundred lighters every few weeks (or dozens every few days; Colibri in particular has THOUSANDS of lighters out there every day on eBay and most of them are junk and related to nothing movie-wise of interest so trying to find something like the Electro-Quartz model used in say Blade Runner (that as far as I can tell had no specific name to search for to have an automatic search narrow it down) can be an exercise in futility. OTOH, once in awhile you get lucky.
Other times, it's not so hard to find the lighter (e.g. There's been TWO Dunhill Broadboy Mark II lighters for sale for some time that are the same brand/model as the famous lighter from Dr. No and Goldfinger that Sean Connery used, but the texture was custom so they're not exact without modifying them (and some might say thereby destroying their true inherent value as actual collector's items, but I suppose it comes down to what one is looking for) and the two in question are both over $4K ($4200 vs $5700 give or take a few dozen bucks). I'm not
that interested in one and I gather neither is anyone else or they wouldn't sit on eBay unpurchased for literally years at a time. I think the cheaper one isn't sterling silver, but if you're gong to pay
that much for al lighter, what's an extra $1500? The silver plated one can degrade over time with any kind of friction/use. The sterling one could be used and still last indefinitely, but my god is that worth that much when it's not even from the movie? My answer is NO. I still can't believe I paid just over $800 for a near-mint Maltese Falcon Touch Tip.... People I know at work thought I was NUTS.
