Blog by Troy Wilburn

I just picked up this Dr. Grabow Viscount Continental shape #25 a short while ago from a friend over at Dr. Grabow Collectors Forum. It was in excellent lightly smoked condition and only required some very slight cleaning and buffing.

This pipe completed my Continental 25 Collection. The Continental shapes were offered by Dr. Grabow from the early 60s to no later than 67-68. The Shape #25 seems to be the rarest of the Continental shapes as they were not offered in the RJ coupon pipes such as Westbrook, Sculptura, Emperor, Commodore etc. (There is an Emperor 25 owned by a former employee of Dr. Grabow. It was most likely made at factory by a worker and a one-off.) Although the other Continental shapes were offered in RJ Coupon pipes. Some models lines did not use the Continental shapes at all (example Belvedere)

So it boils down to the fact that the Continental 25 was only offered in two lines – the Viscount and Starfire. Take that with a grain of salt though as with pipes there are always some odd balls out there that might have been made and is an exception to the rule.

The Viscounts line was not stained and only came as natural wood color. The Viscount Continental 25 was offered in both smooth and wire carved versions. The Starfires were lightly stained in the smooth pipes but the wire carved pipes were always stained black in the Starfire line. Here is my Continental 25 collection all together.

These are fine little flake pipes and it was a lot of fun collecting and searching for them. I hope you enjoy looking at them as well.