Why get an estate pipe rather than a new one?
- Estate pipes, for one, will be cheaper than what you could buy it for new. In general this is true, unless the pipe has somehow gained in value due to increased rarity, the death of the pipe maker, or the end of the manufacturer.
- An estate pipe has been broken in. I do however, remove the built up cake in the bowl. I find it preferable to build your own cake based upon what type of tobacco you smoke. What has been ‘broken in’ is the briar wood which has absorbed the tobacco oils and the fact that the pipe has survived smoking conditions so you know that there is less potential for fractures in the wood or burnout. Generally, if these were to happen in a pipe, they would have happened already. The tobacco oils that have been absorbed into the briar, if any, have little affect on the taste of your own tobacco because of how I recondition a pipe. I completely strip away the cake and get it all the way down to the wood surface of the bowl. I also roughen the inner surface of the bowl to ensure that you can build a cake quickly and successfully with your new estate pipe.
- An estate pipe will have aged briar. That extra age often allows for moisture to escape the briar wood and creates a lighter pipe that smokes dryer.
Why do most of the pipes listed not seem so cheap? I could spend the same amount of money for a low-end new pipe.
Yes, you could, but I wouldn’t. While I state that I offer ‘cheap estate pipes’, by no means do I try to offer pipes that are cheap in quality, but rather, only cheap in price. Some pipes might be newly produced, smoked heavily or not, which I will offer at a price under what you can currently pay for them. Other pipes might be older or rare which create more value for them. These pipes in particular, such as rare Kaywoodies or old production Comoy’s, will be more expensive in price but still cheaper than what you could pay for them elsewhere.
I found the same pipe listed on eBay for way less. Why wouldn’t I just snatch a deal on eBay?
Mostly all of the estate pipe listings on eBay are for pipes that have not been cleaned and/or restored. This is why these particular auctions usually end with lower bids. Those auctions that do contain pipes in pristine condition or estate pipes that have been excellently restored, go for far more than what you could pay for it at Cheap Estate Pipes.