zippo regular identify code

zippo regular identify code The majority of this information is taken from David Poore's book, ZIPPO: The Great American Lighter.

The Zippo dating information shown below is more accurate than the current Zippo® Collector's Guide, but omits various details regarding changes in logo style, design, word spacing, and unique variations. The best source of complete information on Zippo lighter dating is David's book and this book is a must for any serious collector. The dating information shown here will suffice though in a great many cases.

zippo regular identify code




Year Regular Slim

Left Right Left Right
1932 ZIPPO MFG. CO. BRADFORD.PA.
ZIPPO
PAT. PENDING MADE IN U.S.A. Not Made Yet
The case is 2-7/16" tall, 1/4" taller than 1934-1936 outside hinge plate models.
1933 ZIPPO MFG. CO. BRADFORD.PA.
ZIPPO
PAT. PENDING MADE IN U.S.A. Not Made Yet
Case is still 2-7/16" tall during the 1st quarter of 1933. Mid-1933, Zippo reduced
the case to 2-3/16 inches in height. True 1933's are 2-7/16" tall.
1934 ZIPPO MFG. CO. BRADFORD.PA.
ZIPPO
PAT. PENDING MADE IN U.S.A. Not Made Yet
1935 ZIPPO MFG. CO. BRADFORD.PA.
ZIPPO
PAT. PENDING MADE IN U.S.A. Not Made Yet
1936 ZIPPO MFG. CO. BRADFORD.PA.
ZIPPO
PAT. 2032695 MADE IN U.S.A. Not Made Yet
This 1936 model must have an outside four barrel hinge and the "PAT. PENDING" logo. All
true 1936's through 1941's have to have either a flat or slightly curved outward bottom and the
2032695 patent number. The 2032695 patent number was placed on the bottom line in mid-1936.
1937-41 ZIPPO MFG. CO. BRADFORD.PA.
ZIPPO
PAT. 2032695 MADE IN U.S.A. Not Made Yet
Some 1936-40 types have flat bottoms, while other 1938-41 variants have both
corners that are rounded and bottoms that are slightly curved outward.
1942 ZIPPO MFG. CO. BRADFORD.PA.
ZIPPO
PAT. 203695 MADE IN U.S.A. Not Made Yet
Some 1942 models have the 203695 patent number in lieu of the 2032695 patent number.
1942-45 ZIPPO MFG. CO. BRADFORD.PA.
ZIPPO
PAT. 2032695 MADE IN U.S.A. Not Made Yet
All true 1943-45 models will have the 2032695 PAT. NUMBER on a steel case. These do not
have canned bottoms. The bottom of the case extends outward, even more profoundly than their
1938-1942 counterparts. These were black crackle WW II models. The word "ZIPPO" and the
type face vary during these years, with some lettering bolder and more rounded.
1946-49 ZIPPO MFG. CO. BRADFORD.PA.
ZIPPO
PAT. 2032695 MADE IN U.S.A. Not Made Yet
Lighters made from 1946 to date have a canned bottom with the exception of replica lighters.
1946-49 models have a 3-barrel hinge. Spacing of the words, letters and the height of "ZIPPO"
vary during this period.
1949-50 ZIPPO MFG. CO. BRADFORD.PA.
ZIPPO
PAT. 2032695 MADE IN U.S.A. Not Made Yet
The 1949-50 model has the exact same bottom markings as the 1948-49 model, but
it has a 5-barrel hinge on a chrome plated nickel/silver case.
1951 ZIPPO MFG. CO. BRADFORD.PA.
ZIPPO
PAT. 2032695 MADE IN U.S.A. Not Made Yet
The 1951 model had three different bottom markings (which cannot be adequately shown here)
The spacing between the words MFG. CO. and BRADFORD vary in relation to the word ZIPPO,
and at times ZIPPO is shorter in height and words are closer together.
1952-53 ZIPPO MFG. CO. BRADFORD.PA.
ZIPPO
PAT. 2032695 MADE IN U.S.A. Not Made Yet
This model had a 5-barrel chrome plated steel case. There were three bottom variations. The
bottom letterings were alike, but differed as far as the depth of the strike that was made when
stamping it. All the "shorter and more compact" logo.
1953 ZIPPO MFG. CO. BRADFORD.PA.
MADE IN ZIPPO U.S.A.
PAT. 2517191 ® PAT. PEND. Not Made Yet
This model has the "full stamp" bottom logo on a chrome plated steel case with a 5-barrel hinge.
Early 1953 models had the 2032695 patent number whereas later models had the 2517191 patent
number with the large pat. pending logo that covered most of the bottom of the lighter. In 1953
Zippo started using the registered trademark subscript, ®, as part of the bottom logo.
1954-55 ZIPPO MFG. CO. BRADFORD.PA.
ZIPPO
PAT. 2032695 MADE IN U.S.A. Not Made Yet
Very similar to the 1953 model except that it has a 5-barrel hinge on a chrome-plated brass case.
Later 1955 models began using the 2517191 patent number.

Year Regular Slim
Mid-1955 Zippo changed the Logo to a stylized "Zorro" script style slanting from lower left
side towards the upper right-hand side. The actual design is not shown in the codes below. Zippo
also began adding coding marks mid-1955. The "dots" on the left and right sides of the
Zippo logo are located near the top of the Zippo logo, but this couldn't be shown.

Left Right Left Right
1955 BRADFORD, PA.
.... ZIPPO ® ....
PAT. 2517191 PAT. PEND. .... ....
1956 BRADFORD, PA.
... ZIPPO ® ....
PAT. 2517191 PAT. PEND. .... ....
In 1956, note that one dot has been removed from the left side.
1957 BRADFORD, PA.
.... ZIPPO ® ....
PAT. 2517191 .... ....
For 1957, the left dot has returned, but the "PAT. PEND." logo has been removed.
1958 BRADFORD, PA.
.... ZIPPO ® ....
PAT. 2517191 .... ...
From 1958 to 1967, the patent numbers are centered.
1959 BRADFORD, PA
... ZIPPO ® ....
PAT. 2517191 ... ...
This is a true 1959 model, with 3 dots on the left and 4 dots on the right, but there is no PAT. PEND.
on a 1959 model. The 1960-67 models have the 2517191 pat. # centered as well as having the
dots or slashes depending on the year. From now on only the dots or slashes are shown, but the
look is exactly the same in all other ways as above.

Left Right Left Right
1960 ... ... .. ...
1961 ... .. .. ..
1962 .. .. .. .
1963 .. . . .
1964 . . .
1965 .

Zippo put no code on the bottom of a 1965 slim, so that both the regular and slim size
lighters would have the same code from then on.
1966 | | | | | | | | same
1967 | | | | | | | same
1968 | | | | | | same
1969 | | | | | same
Zippo made two changes on the bottom of the cases mid-1969. Zippo used a new press
machine in 1969 which caused the "canned" bottom of the lighter to be more dented in. Also,
at this time, Zippo changed the "Z" logo on the word Zippo and gave the letter "Z" a "tail" hanging
down on the right side. Therefore there are two different logos on a 1969 lighter.
1970 | | | | same
1971 | | | same
1972 | | same
1973 | same
1974 //// //// same
1975 //// /// same
1976 /// /// same
1977 /// // same
1978 // // same
1979 / // same
1979 marked the last year Zippo used the "Zorro" style "Z" on the word Zippo. 1980 marked the
first year of the stylized "Zippo" logo were the letters "Z" and "i" are connected and a flame takes
the place of the "dot" in the letter "i". In addition, the words "Bradford, PA." were moved below
the word Zippo. From 1980 to date Zippo has used many different bottom logos, even for the
same year (although their code system is still accurate).
1980 / / same
1981 / same
1982 \\\\ \\\\ same
1983 \\\\ \\\ same
1984 \\\ \\\ same
1985 \\\ \\ same
1986 \\ \\ same
Effective 7-1-86 the above system was replaced by a YEAR/LOT code. Year is noted
in Roman Numerals whereas Letters designate LOT month (A=Jan., B=Feb., etc.) The LOT
letter designation is to the left of the word Zippo, and the Roman Numeral is to the right.
1986 A to L II same
1987 A to L III same
1988 A to L IV same
1989 A to L V same
1990 A to L VI same
1991 A to L VII same
1992 A to L VIII same
1993 A to L IX same
1994 A to L X same
1995 A to L XI same
1996 A to L XII same
1997 A to L XIII same
1998 A to L XIV same
1999 A to L XV same
2000 A to L XVI same
2001 A to L 01 same
2002 A to L 02 same
2003 A to L 03 same
2004 A to L 04 same
2005 A to L 05 same
2006 A to L 06 same
2007 A to L 07 same

You have got to find what you love

Stanford Report, June 14, 2005 'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says

This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.
The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.
It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
My second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.
I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.
My third story is about death.
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.
This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Thank you all very much.

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