E-Bay;Your Best Buys and Worst Disappointments

[Winslow]

I guess a lot of us spend time checking pipes on E-Bay,do some bidding and
make an occasional purchase.I'd like to start this thread and hear about the
great deals you got and the not so great deals.

One of my best wins was an Ardor Giant Calabash for 86$,the pipe retails for
over 300$,mine arrived show cleaned and with bare wood at the bottom of the
bowl.
Worst win was an Ardor Fantasy that turned out to be a small vest pocket
pipe.I couldn't believe I won it until I received it,then I realized why I got it for
65$.

Winslow

 

[ftrplt]

This is gonna' be easy!! Best buys....two....a no-name pot for $12 and a $15 bulldog simply marked "Straight Grain." Both pipes have some of the nicest straight grain I have ever seen. Other than a couple of minute sand pits, both pipes are great. Both super smokers. Worst: my only, and last, Upshall. A super nice unsmoked sandblast billiard. Long pencil-thin shank. Veddy, veddy British. Smokes good until the last third or fourth part of the bowl. It tastes and smells like I'm burning wood!! At first I thought I was burning out the bowl; nope, no evidence of that! Don't know what it is! I've tried different tobaccos; cleaning out the bowl; thoroughly cleaning the entire pipe with grain alcohol and resweetening with port or sherry. No luck! Fortunately, I only paid $58 for it. FTRPLT

 

[puros_bran]

My best win was when I snagged a Peterson System Standard for $147, it was from a guy in Ireland that picked it up straight from the factory so you know it wasn't a fake,like so many floating around today.

My worst burn was this pipe I bought marked 'An Ivverson Product' or something like that, damn thing was flat on both sides and was cross cut to boot(birdseye on both sides?, what kinda knitwit can't get the grain right before carving? ). I complained to the seller but he just kept telling me I got an unbelievable deal on a 6:10 Blowfish (I swear I don't understand the lingo these kids use today, is 6:10 like 4:20? , and what kinda code word is blowfish? ), I tossed the thing in the garbage, knowing I'd never find a sucker to get my 83 bucks back from.

 

[scottyb]

puros_bran, were you making a joke? I sure hope so.

The stamp "An Ivarrson Product" refers to either Sixten, Lars or Nanna Ivarsson. If were no additional letters, it would be a Sixten, and if there were either a "LI' or "NI" also stamped, it would be a Lars or Nanna.

These pipes are INCREDIBLY expensive, and the blowfish is one of the most "sought after" shapes by collectors. If you really threw it in the garbage, you lost MANY hundreds of dollars.

scottyb

 

[Anonymous]

Best deal
A 1964 Dunhill canadian sandblast $15
The seller said it had cracks he thought the ridges from blasting were cracks

worst deal

Was listed as a peterson when I got it it was a wellington $25

 

[bigfish]

Best deal - I got a Boswell in really nice shape for 75 cents.
Worst deal - A Bings Favorite that someone had glued together. The stem was full of glue the whole length of it. I never did get it apart!

 

[Dock]

puros_bran, were you making a joke? I sure hope so.

Yes Scott! I'm fairly certain Brandon was just kidding around w/ us......

Best,
D.J.

 

[puros_bran]

This belongs in the pipe dream page but I'll say it anyway.

For about three months after I got the green light from the Mrs to replace my pipes I looked for a Lars or Nanna Horn.

No dice! Of course I've spent the dough on other things now, so I fully expect them to start popping up on the 50 or so pipe etailers I visit.

In other words, Yes I was just 'communicating feces'.

 

[Hermit]

My best was the beautiful Tinsky Calabash I bought from Dock.
My worst was a little bulldog that looked ok in the picture,
but was kinda beat and had a damn tooth hole in the bottom of the stem.
That wasn't much of a loss; about fifteen bucks.
I've been lucky and picked up a few nice ones cheap.

This new Paronelli was $22 shipped. (the shipping was most of the price)

 

[The German Shepherd]

A few years ago, I spotted a Barling bent egg on Ebay. I had just read Tad Gage's article in P & T magazine about Barlings and was looking to find a nice one. It seemed to me that the pipe might be a Pre-Transitional piece because it was marked TVF. I took the gamble and won the pipe for $26.01US. When it arrived, I found the model number was indeed a three digit number and after having the pipe examined by some folks "in the know" I found it was indeed a Pre-Transition Barling.

Now for the a disappointment. One of my first EBAY purchases was a Nording Smooth bent egg (LARGE bowl). When I received the pipe, I noticed that there was no "N" on the stem. This was not evident in the EBAY picture, nor was it mentioned in the ad stating the stem was a replacement. Sure enough, the stem was a replacement and when I wrote the seller, he gave me a "too bad, it's your pipe now" answer. I kept the pipe, but overpaid for it.

Jay

 

[Buddy Springman]

The two best deals were a couple of Tinsky's for about $80 each. I had Mark replace the original vulcanite stem on the first with my preferred acrylic.





The worst was a Brigham in which the maple shank liner had munged right to the briar...really nasty...discarded after several futile attempts at recovery.

Buddy