A
Anonymous
Guest
The deeper this de-/re-cession sinks us, the more trouble not a few of the newer BoBs have trying to put together a rack or two of quality smokers.
The beaux ideal, to many of us who have been around the block a few times, are the old British golden-* (and silver-)** age classics. But with the upsurge of pipe popularity in recent years, people have driven even the common grades of these pretty high.
So while on a price-value basis a used Honda Civic is a relative bargain compared to a new one, the same strategy with used pipes stopped being feasible several years ago.
Stopped, that is, if it's the names (and the doodads on the stems) you want. If it's pipes, on the other hand, you can still score and score pretty big.
Dunhill excepted (because they were buying other makers' first-quality stummels to finish & sell as their own), the English firms were coping with shrinking demand by selling unmarked first quality pipes to retail shops and chains that stamped them with their own names (Bewlay comes to mind immediately), and selling cosmetic seconds under other names. The bigger makers had so many of these going that people are still figuring out which one made which trade-named pipes.
Comoy, for example, made (among others) "Drury Lane" pipes (the name of the road in front of the factory) ; early on people identified the Sasieni seconds lines and valued them as less-than-Sasienis-but-better-than-ordinary-no-names. Many, however, are still just "old pipes."
The quality levels of these can vary tremendously. But when you get a good one, possibly after a stem tweak, you've got a great one. With luck, what would have been a high end "name" with a cosmetic blemish. For assembling a collection of well-seasoned smokers on the cheap (or even just because you like the idea of picking up -- as smokers -- bargains), this (IMHO) is the way to go.
What brings this to mind tonight is an outing with FVF in a "P&B Collection" smooth pear. (P&B = Puff & Brouse -- a US retail chain in the 1970s that competed with the Tinder Box). A basket pipe when sold, it's nicely made, of beautiful briar, and has no fills I can find even after coming up on 40 years. I doubt if it would bring even $10 today, even with the silver band I had put on it years ago on a lark. It needs a cleaner every five minutes or so (or an airway improvement in the stem), but the taste it delivers is unrivaled by any new pipe I've ever had. It shares "A-Team" rack space with PeeDee's Castello Collection, a Haymarket-era Loewe and a pre-1922 Peterson DeLuxe -- because it's a great-tasting pipe.
If you're after value, look past the name.
:face:
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* pre-WW II era
** 1947 -- 1970s
The beaux ideal, to many of us who have been around the block a few times, are the old British golden-* (and silver-)** age classics. But with the upsurge of pipe popularity in recent years, people have driven even the common grades of these pretty high.
So while on a price-value basis a used Honda Civic is a relative bargain compared to a new one, the same strategy with used pipes stopped being feasible several years ago.
Stopped, that is, if it's the names (and the doodads on the stems) you want. If it's pipes, on the other hand, you can still score and score pretty big.
Dunhill excepted (because they were buying other makers' first-quality stummels to finish & sell as their own), the English firms were coping with shrinking demand by selling unmarked first quality pipes to retail shops and chains that stamped them with their own names (Bewlay comes to mind immediately), and selling cosmetic seconds under other names. The bigger makers had so many of these going that people are still figuring out which one made which trade-named pipes.
Comoy, for example, made (among others) "Drury Lane" pipes (the name of the road in front of the factory) ; early on people identified the Sasieni seconds lines and valued them as less-than-Sasienis-but-better-than-ordinary-no-names. Many, however, are still just "old pipes."
The quality levels of these can vary tremendously. But when you get a good one, possibly after a stem tweak, you've got a great one. With luck, what would have been a high end "name" with a cosmetic blemish. For assembling a collection of well-seasoned smokers on the cheap (or even just because you like the idea of picking up -- as smokers -- bargains), this (IMHO) is the way to go.
What brings this to mind tonight is an outing with FVF in a "P&B Collection" smooth pear. (P&B = Puff & Brouse -- a US retail chain in the 1970s that competed with the Tinder Box). A basket pipe when sold, it's nicely made, of beautiful briar, and has no fills I can find even after coming up on 40 years. I doubt if it would bring even $10 today, even with the silver band I had put on it years ago on a lark. It needs a cleaner every five minutes or so (or an airway improvement in the stem), but the taste it delivers is unrivaled by any new pipe I've ever had. It shares "A-Team" rack space with PeeDee's Castello Collection, a Haymarket-era Loewe and a pre-1922 Peterson DeLuxe -- because it's a great-tasting pipe.
If you're after value, look past the name.
:face:
-----------
* pre-WW II era
** 1947 -- 1970s
