I stumbled across this Dunhill Tanshell on eBay near the end of the auction period. The (relatively) low bid price told me that there was probably something significantly wrong with the pipe, the auction listing, or both. Curious, I read through the auction description, which was almost ridiculously brief, but accurate as far as it went:

“Dunhill Tanshell Estate Pipe of the Apple “K” model with a date code for 1969.

The pipe is estate fresh and never been touched.    The white dot is a miss and the stem tip has marks, the bowl is pretty good, looks like it was held in the hand a lot. Wear to the Dunhill lettering though still visible on the right angle.”

The pictures included with the listing were not of the best quality, but were clear enough for me to see that the bowl wasn’t cracked and that the stem looked original though in…