..I adore vintage Zippo lighters, and searched for more from E-bay.
I was quite upset , to see so many lighters from Vietnam, inscribed by young men, who had lost them, or had been lost themselves.
Quite distressing, and they will not be added to my collection.
Try an e-bay search yourselves guys, it`s quite chilling indeed.

I've been doing family history research for many years - and a couple of years ago came accross a post on a message board by someone who while metal detecting had found a medal in a field in Belgium with the exact same name as one that I was researching.

After a little more investigation this medal turned out to have belonged to my Gr Gr Grandfather who had died (in Belgium) in WW1 !

Astonishing co-incidence.

Even more chilling when you consider 80% are fake.

..the blatantly gun damaged ones scared me enough, it had not occured to me that they might be making them like that.
Re; your ancestor ITK, it would have been horrid to find the medal on E-bay.
I have a French violin, circa 1800, that nobody knew where it came from, when my Grandad died, we got on the net, and tracked our roots, and it turned out that we came from a French traveller.
He must have been a wandering minstrel, as his roots were also linked to everybody with my name who is NOT related to me in the area.
It`s nice to think it`s his violin though, which it probably isn`t, but I like to believe it is.