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Bennett Winch SC Holdall

Dunhill Unique Silver Lighter

Felix Leiter and his wife Della give James Bond a Dunhill Lighter with inscription.
Felix Leiter and his wife Della give James Bond a Dunhill Lighter with inscription.
photo © Eon Productions, United Artists, MGM, United International Pictures
photo © Dunhill
Dunhill Unique is not available with plain finish anymore, only Vertical Lines or Barley as seen above.
photo © Dunhill

photo © Eon Productions, United Artists, MGM, United International Pictures
James Bond (Timothy Dalton) holds the Dunhill Unique lighter and reads the inscription
photo © Eon Productions, United Artists, MGM, United International Pictures

In the 1989 movie Licence To Kill (1989) James Bond (Timothy Dalton) receives a Dunhill lighter from his good friend Felix Leiter and his wife Della on their wedding day. The lighter is a silver Dunhill Unique with plain finish.

The Unique lighter is still available but not with a plain finish as seen in the film: the Unique lighter now comes in Barley or Vertical Lines texture (see images on the left).

The lighter seen in the film has an inscription that reads:

James,
Love Always
Della and Felix

Bond takes the lighter with him on his rogue mission: we see the lighter laying next to him in the Casino de Isthmus City. Bond uses the lighter at the end of the movie to ignite Sanchez who is soaked in gasoline, so we can assume that in the story, the lighter is lost. The actual lighter seen in the film got a longer life: 007 Magazine reported in 1989 that Timothy Dalton had suggested to Cubby Broccoli that he donate the the cigarette lighter to the 'Children In Need' campaign, which Cubby did. The final price of the lighter is not known, but two days after the start of the auction the bidding had risen to £3,000.

Dunhill provided accessories for other Bond movies as well. The association first began in 1962 when the production team acquired a cigarette lighter for Sean Connery's introduction in Dr. No (read more on ajb007.co.uk). Bond uses a gold Dunhill lighter and wears a Dunhill belt and gold/silver Dunhill cufflinks in Tomorrow Never Dies, two or three other Dunhill cufflinks in The World Is Not Enough and a silver L-shaped pair of cufflinks in Die Another Day.

The Dunhill Unique lighter without the vertical lines or barley texture is difficult to find, of course eBay is always a good place to look.

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Dunhill in James Bond novels

Dunhill as a brand is also mentioned in some of the Ian Fleming novels. In From Russia With Love a "well-used Dunhill Gold Lighter" is mentioned on the first page as one of the possessions of a dead body. In the 1964 novel You Only Live Twice, Tiger Tanaka uses a "Dunhill filter holder" and in The Living Daylights, Captain Sender also uses a "Dunhill filtered cigarette holder".

Product Code: 
ac030

Summer Essentials 2024

Comments

The final price of the lighter was 1,000 pounds, it was given to a Bond Collector for his 18th Birthday
The "dead body" belonged to the assassin, "Grant." It's classic foreshadowing, but, at the start of the novel, Grant is not dead--just a metaphor.
I found this lighter in a storage locker can anyone help me with it's potential value plz

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