Somebody recently recommended the vintage GE travel iron. well, I needed a new iron, so I bid on and won the GE 139F18 on ebay. It arrived today and I was so excited to use it that I plugged it right in. I was a little confused by the fact that there was no way to regulate the heat. I placed a piece of badly wrinkled cotton on my ironing board spritzed it with H2O and approached it with the iron. The iron had barely touched it when it burst into flames and burned a hole right through the fabric, my ironing board cover and the ironing board pad! Fortunately, I still had my spray bottle of water handy and was able to douse the fire before burning down the entire house. Needless to say, I'm going to put this iron in the dumpster and head to Walmart for something a little more up to date. Glad I only paid $1.99 for this valuable lesson. Now I know why housewives are always so paranoid about unplugging the iron before leaving the house! (I've always plugged my iron into a surge protector so that when the lights are off, the iron is off)

Oh Suzee! Sorry to hear of your catastrophe! I guess I have been very lucky with all the old irons I have picked up at estate and garage sales!

I think you should notify ebay of the transaction as well as the person you bought it from!

Well, since it was "vintage", it would have been worth it to take some time to carefully inspect the electricals. Even opening up the iron and looking at all the connections, etc. Vintage electric appliances are nothing to mess around with unless you know how to check them out. Sorry for your little incident....