I think I first got this idea from someone at the 2017 Constellation Burn. She had a camp with lighters and stickers and basically was letting people sticker-design their own lighters and keep them. Simple. I thought this was quite cool. I decided to do this myself and added the stickers I had at home to some lighters, knowing that I’d have unique lighters I could identify as mine.
As (my) Life would have it, most of my stickers were from Burning Man camps, which it sweet to me as they remind me of people and events.
FWIW, I was at a long-time and dear friend’s house earlier this summer and had walked up to his extensive altar in his home. I was drawn to a coffee mug with a 8-10 lighters in it. “What a great idea,” I thought as I reached into the mug to pull one out. (Not that I don’t know what a lighter looks like.) And what did I pull out? But MY lighter with the holographic pineapple sticker! I absolutely knew it was my lighter and I promptly pocketed it (after exclaiming, “hey, you have my lighter”). So, yeah, this approach works for giving your lighters a better chance of coming back to you, if that is something of interest to you.
And another time I was at a friend’s house that I hadn’t visited in about a year. A lighter was on the counter, my eyes were drawn to it, I picked it up and said, “Hey, did you find this lighter somewhere?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Someone left it here awhile ago.”
“That was me!” I said, pocketing my lighter.
