Tony J
Favorite Answer
All the zippos sold in the tourist areas in Viet Nam are fakes, along with the ones sold online.
If you really want an authentic lighter, asking around at the VFW might be a good idea.
?
Your quest will be a very difficult one. This is a long answer, but the main answer is at the end of this, giving you some background information first. In Vietnam today, many street vendors and store sell Vietnam War collectible items. These include the Zippos. Vietnam which is a very industrious nation, have finely mastered the art of producing replicas. Their are many a tailor in Vietnam where you walk in producing a glossy magazine fashion photo in a magazine, allow them to measure you up, come back in 3 days and they will have perfectly replicated the name brand clothing item, right down to stitching in the label. Of the best of them, not even an expert can pick the difference. Louis Vuttion opened up branches in Vietnam a couple years ago because it was calculated that some 60% of Vuitton fakes in the world were coming out of Vietnam. By opening up a branch in VN, it would then enliven copyright laws to make it illegal to replicate, although it still happens to a lesser degree. Prior to that, it was 100% legal for the fakers to replicate. In the central city of Hue, in a particular, along the Perfume River in the city, there are easy a dozen plus people with war memorabilia laid out. As both a collector and military historian myself, the only genuine articles I could see among the array of helmets, belt buckles, bayonets, zippo lighters and so forth, were the corroding bullet casings. (they had these old pilots helmets covered in barnacles, claiming they were US pilots helmets retrieved from the sea. They were in fact Belgian flight helmets, probably deliberately let in the see for a few months to fake it. Now regarding your question I raise the above because the world has been inundated with high quality replica fakes. The zippos replicated in Vietnam are so high quality, that many a foreigner who has bought one and it subsequently broke or became faulty, have taken it to the Registered Zippo agent in their home country and had the expert examine it and replace it with a genuine one, since the replica and genuine could not be told apart. For the genuine Vietnam Zippo, you would have to go to a reputable dealer and even in that, you would still not be 100" guaranteed it is genuine. Zippo replicas sell in Vietnam for $2 to $4 each. Some are passed off as being found in the jungle somewhere, given that it appears very weathered and somewhat damaged. ( one fake I found that way, appears so very genuine except for the spelling errors)
Sp II Guzzi
If you walk along the street on the south end of Hoan Kiem Lake in Ha Noi you will see lots of war-era zippos in the tourist shops there. Seeing those was one of the things that literally shocked me the first time I was in Ha Noi. I won't be so foolish as to say they are not good reproductions, but if they are repros, they are very, very good repros!
I saw similar lighters elsewhere in my travels in Viet Nam.
?
Veterans Of Foreign Wars (VFW) may have some for sell in their sites..
Anonymous
Here are some of them:
http://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/711-53200-19255-0/1?type=4&campid=5335971225&toolid=10001&customid=&mpre=http%3A%2F%2Fshop.ebay.com%2Fitems%2F_W0QQ_fromZR46%3F_nkw%3Dvietnam%2Bwar%2Bzippo%26_sacat%3D0%26_fromfsb%3D%26_trksid%3Dm270.l1313%26_odkw%3Dprayer%2Bcoins%26_osacat%3D0