He got busted with a hide scraper in his hand. He was far out in the Canyonlands and he didn't see them coming. He thought he was the only human for fifty miles. After that he gave up artifacts. He still had a need to collect though. He had his rocks and his insulators, but now even insulators were becoming rare and expensive. He had to find something cheap and legal that he could squirrel away for the pure fun of it.
He was lighting a last cigarette before he went in to the ball game when his lighter failed. He was just about to throw it away when it occurred to him that the lighter was a really interesting color. Sort of a greenish chartreuse. Someone in China or the Philippines must have picked the color. Some one must have mixed the chemicals to turn the plastic that color. Just so he could throw it away. He put the lighter back in his pocket, returned the unlit cigarette to the box and went into the ball game.
In a couple of years he had an impressive collection. Disposable lighters were everywhere, and they came in a rainbow of colors. Burnt orange was the rarest. He wasn't even sure it was an original color. He found the orange lighter in a ditch near a golf course, and he thought maybe the water had changed it.
He displayed the lighters on black velvet, under a special light. They were magnificent. They glowed more richly than any jewel collection.
He was on his way to a collectable convention in Placerville when his car broke down. He'd taken a short cut through the Sierras and the cold was intense. He had no warm clothes and a bitter night was falling. The car cooled down until it was as cold as the outside. He collected some wood and thought a fire would save him. There was plenty of dry wood around. Surely someone would come this way tonight, tomorrow. When he had the fire arranged he went to his lighter collection and started snapping them one by one. He had two hundred and twelve lighters with him and not a one of them would light. He went back over them again and snapped them frantically once twice three times until a shocking pink one held a flame just long enough to catch some dry lichen which flared for a few seconds and subsided. He crouched by the tiny glow and blew until he nearly passed out, but the sparks died down. Once more the pink lighter flared and died and once more he could not keep the flame.
With numb hands he collected up the lighters and returned to the car and tried once more to start it. Nothing.
He curled up on the back seat with all his clothes and an old L.A. Times wrapped tight around him.
Outside the car the first snow of winter was falling soft and silent.