Maury shared a pic of four of his lighters. I don’t know the exact dates, but made my best guess as to the order they might have been manufactured. Maybe someone else has a better guess?
My guesses:
1) The Willys Motors is likely the earliest, possibly not long after the merger with Kaiser. It didn’t take long after the merger for “Willys” to take a back seat to ‘Jeep’, so my guess is 1953/1954.
2) The 4 Wheel Drive one is my guess for second, maybe 1954-56. Kaiser was ramping up the advertising and “4 Wheel Drive” was definitely a prominent element of that.
3) The yellow-blue logo is from 1957ish. That logo appeared on a number of brochures of that era, including this one from 1957.
4) I can’t tell if the red ‘Jeep’ light is plastic/glass or a combination, but I will guess that one is the newest one? It kind of feels like late 1950s or early 1960s to me.
from left to right , Zippo , Scripto , Ronson , Zippo — Zippo ” 4 wheel drive ” has the most smokers PATINA ?
The Zippos have stampings on the bottom, that can help with dating them.
I love the one of the far right with the “4 Wheel Drive.”