By Chuck Woodbury
editor, Out West

GUTHRIE, Okla. -- Ted Ballard never smoked, but he owns 20,000 lighters. "To be politically correct, I like to call them mechanical pyrotechnic apparatuses," he said.

He and his wife Pat own and operate the National Lighter Museum in a 100-year-old building in downtown Guthrie, right next door to a fire station.

Ted Ballard has collected lighters for 56 of his 63 years. If a man were ever in love with a hobby, Ballard is the man. He's retired,

Pat and Ted Ballard

but he still works -- eight hours a day, seven days a week -- at the museum.

"I prefer to be at the museum than to be off somewhere," he said. "I know you need a life of your own, but the museum is all consuming."

He and Pat live upstairs. Ballard uses the basement for storage and as a repair shop. About one-quarter of the first floor is devoted to the museum, which is jam-packed with about 6,000 lighters -- table models, pocket models, advertising, WWI, WWII, Zippos, Ronsons and more. It's the biggest collection of fire starters in the world.

It's a non-profit operation, but not by design. "It costs us a lot of money, maybe $20,000 a year," said Ballard, who always has his eye out for a potential buyer -- someone who cares passionately about lighters who will eventually take over the operation.

Admission to the museum is free. Operating funds come from donations and the sale of lighters, most between $50 and $100. Ballard has sold some lighters for up to $2,500, and one time made an astronomical profit. "I bought a lighter for $5. I didn't know what it was worth. I ended up selling it for $2,000 because that's how much it was worth to one collector."

But he stresses that he always tries to pay collectors a fair price, not cheat them. "If you do that, you hurt the industry," he said.

Zippo Lighters at eBay CLICK HERE

Many museum visitors end up selling rather than buying. "We have a message," said Ballard, "and that's that if I can't convince someone to keep his lighters, then I want him to sell them to me."

Through the centuries, lighters have been used for many purposes. One on display is about 800 years old and was probably used by a fireman -- "someone who had the knowledge to make fire," explained Ballard.

The device is in a leather pouch and works when a piece of steel strikes a flint to ignite the pouch's tender (thistle leaves and hemp, for example) using an explosive, commonly bat guano or seagull manure. "Seafarers had access to the seagull manure and land lovers the bat guano," he said.

Among other older objects in the museum's collection are detonator lighters from the Civil War. These helped soldiers speed up their loading efforts.

A perpetual lighter is displayed. "These were for public use in the 1700s," explained Ballard. "They'd be found in tobacco shops, public bars and affluent men's clubs, and would burn all the time. Some even generated their own gases."

Many of the Ballards' lighters were distributed as promotional items during the heyday of smoking, which ended in the '70s when the Surgeon General proclaimed smoking unsafe.

These "pocket" lighters were given out as advertising or for special occasions -- 25 years with a company, or perhaps in honor of the completion of a project. "If the lighter has a name, date and event on it, then it's a historical document," said Ballard. He sited the completion of a dam as an example. "If the workers finished under budget or ahead of schedule, the lighters were a reward."

Lighters were given out by presidents, governors, admirals, kings and queens.

Millions were given away free by virtually every major American company, during what Ballard likes to call the "Pocket Billboard Period." The working class no longer had to buy lighters.

After World War II, American copyright infringements were overlooked in reoccupied Japan, and the Japanese turned out millions of novelty lighters -- in the shapes of trains, baseballs, airplanes, radios, typewriters -- you name it.

Today, said Ballard, lighter collecting is more popular than ever, with six clubs devoted to it worldwide, and hundreds of thousands of collectors.

One mission of the National Lighter Museum is to help overcome the public's negative view of lighters, based on their association with smoking. "Some people seem to think that they can get cancer just by looking at our lighters," he explained.

The National Lighter Museum is open every day, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., at 107 S. 2nd Street, Guthrie, OK 73044. The telephone is (405) 282-3025. Admission is free.

From Out West #34, April 1996