Whenever I visit Edmonton there are three places I always visit in old Strathcona – two Antique Malls and Burlington on Whyte Tobacconists. My last trip I visited all three and one of the Antique Malls yielded a couple of treasures while the other was a bust. You never know which place will yield something but generally I don’t walk away from both with nothing to show for the stop. This time I found two items in the same display case in the mall (this is truly a Mall – it is large, two stories of things to look at, many stalls and many sellers). The first was a beautiful older Parker Super Briar Bark Cherrywood and the other was the old cutter top tin of Condor Slices I have already written about earlier. Let me tell you the story of that find.

The shop is full of antique hunter’s eye candy and what astonishes me is that things I played with as a child and used in my dad’s garage have now become antiques. (Hmmm, I wonder what that makes me. Ah well that is another story, back to the walk about.) As I walked through the shop there were many displays that had pipes – older Brighams, Dr. Grabows, Yello Boles, Whitehalls, Medico’s and new Meerschaum pipes. The place had a lot of old pipes and each of them warranted a good look. To complicate things and I suppose to give a modicum of security in a world of shop lifters, I had to hunt down a store clerk to get a key to open the locked displays before I could look at any of the pipes. Because of that I was very selective about the ones I looked at more closely. The mall was full of people that day and they were milling about looking at everything – everything but pipes in this case. I made my way through the shop and noted case numbers that I would need to have opened for a more thorough look. My method in this kind of shop is to get two or three case numbers in my head before I get help from a clerk. Why two or three? Well, simply put – that is the most numbers I can remember in my head these days! With that limitation the hunt in a mall that size can take me awhile. Ask my wife and children how long it can take and they will tell you, I have no sense of time when I am on the prowl for old pipes.

I checked out some Mario Grande pipes – new ones – that were in one display and several other brands that looked promising but none of them grabbed my attention. I am getting more particular than I was when I first started picking up old pipes in shops like these. I think it was on the second or third set of case numbers that I took back to the main desk to get a clerk with keys to open that I found the little Parker. I know that it was in the back portion of the mall, in the far right corner of the shop. It was a small display case, upright glass with internal lighting. When I saw the case it caught my eye. There were quite a few pipes on the shelves of the case, arranged to attract attention. On the second shelf was a little sandblast cherrywood shaped pipe sitting in a pipe rest that caught my eye. The stem was slightly bent and the blast was craggy and deep – kind of like the blast you find on early Dunhill Shells. The size was diminutive but looked like it would sit well in the hand. Even though it was only one case number in my head this time, because of the beauty of this pipe, it was time to go and get the clerk and the keys.

I went back to the front of the shop and got the clerk and we headed back to the case. I am always in a bit of a rush in this phase of the hunt in an Antique Mall because I am paranoid that someone else has spotted the object of my desire and will beat me to the punch. So I made my way back to the case in a hurry by the most direct route. There was no fooling around along the way. I saw other pipes in other cases as I hurried to the back corner but I merely glanced at them and noted their location for later looking. I was a man on a mission and nothing would deter me from reaching my goal.

We made it back to the case and no one was bent over an open door fondling the little pipe when we arrived. Whew, I beat all contenders (I know, probably no one else in the mall cared about the little pipe, but let me have my delusion). The clerk fiddled with the keys until he had the correct one in the lock and the door opened. He stepped back and let me pick up the pipe that had caught my eye – the little cherrywood sandblast. I turned it over in my hands checking it out for cracks and damage. The thin shank looked fine, the stem had some small tooth marks and was oxidized but in good shape. The finish and blast were very nice. It was in excellent shape and there was even a wad of tobacco still in the bowl – almost as if the old pipe man had laid it down while he went out to check the mail or eat dinner… It would clean up very nicely. I checked out the stamping on the underside of the shank. It read Parker over Super in a diamond over Briar Bark. I had a nice older Briar Bark in my hands – the equivalent of a Dunhill Shell in my book. It was also stamped Made in London England and had the shape number of 283. It sported a 4 in a circle stamp was well, which was the group number (Dunhill based sizing system). This surprised me a bit as it is pretty tiny for a group 4 pipe but that was its stamping. Up close the stem also bore a faded and worn stamping of the P in the Diamond of the Parker line. At the low price of $15 it was a keeper and it was definitely going home with me.

The clerk took it in hand, as they have a policy to carry items to the front and hold them for you until you are done shopping. He was just locking the case when I looked at the shelf a last time before he closed the door and there in the back of the display case was an old tin with the label Gallaher’s Condor Sliced. I stopped him and reached into the case and picked up the old tin. It was full! I turned it over in my hands and noted that it was a cutter top tin – probably WWII vintage. It was two ounces of old tobacco, unopened and pristine. The tin itself was in great shape. I added this to my lot. Not a bad find for an afternoon – an older Parker sandblast cherrywood and an old tin of Condor Sliced. Since I am one of the few who actually like Condor Slices this was a great find for me.

I followed the clerk back to the front of the shop to pay for my purchases with the satisfaction of a well spent afternoon. I had a tin of old tobacco – cost $10 and a Parker – cost $15 – all totaled a $25 hunting spree. Not bad at all and to top it off when I got to the till a young clerk commented on the pipe. He too was a pipe smoker and collector. (In this case I believed him rather than cynically assume more sales hype. To date I have not received many comments from sales clerks on old and dirty pipes I buy so odds are he was telling the truth.) He commented on how he did not know how he had missed seeing those two. Before I settled the bill he offered to give me a walk-through of other potential pipes that he had scoped out. He spoke of some of the great finds he had scooped while working at the mall. He told me he had Burlington on Whyte do his restorations on the pipes he found and asked who did mine. I told him that part of the fun of the hobby for me was restoring my own. He laughed and said one day he would venture into that part of things. During our walkabout nothing else caught my eye so we went back to the till and I paid up. I walked out of the mall satisfied with the hunt and with two pieces of tobacco history. I couldn’t have asked for more. Now off to find a pub and celebrate the finds and examine them more closely.

By Steve Laug 14 October 2013