Friday I was traveling with my daughter and I talked her into stopping at an Antique Mall that has been a good source of estate pipes for me in the past. We pulled in and it was cold and windy when we got out of the car. We hurried into the shop to get warm again. I was so intent on the hunt that I did not even bother to stop at the lunch counter in the corner of the mall to grab a coffee. I was a man on a mission. I quickly went down the first rows of stalls and found absolutely nothing other than the overpriced tobacco tin from yesteryear. On about the third row of stalls one of the staff asked if she could help me at about the same time I came upon one of the displays where I had found pipes in the past. I looked inside the case as she spoke and then asked her to open the case for me. Inside was a rack of pipes – the usual fare and nothing initially that caught my interest. Then the last pipe in the rack called out to me.

It was an old tan rusticated opera pipe. I took it from the rack and looked it over, turning it over in my hands I saw that the stamping was faint and hard to read. In the light of the shop all I could see was Made in London England and the faint stamping toward the front of the bowl that read “____________ Imperial” in script. I had no idea of the maker but decided this one was going home with me. The price was about $20 but it would clean up nicely. The staff asked if I collected old pipes and what I did with them. I explained to her that it was a hobby – I both smoked them and repaired them. I asked if she had any others that might interest me.

She nodded and said she thought she had something toward the back of the shop. I always take those words with a grain of salt until I actually see what she has. I have gotten excited only to have the hopes dashed when I find a chewed up bunch of old basket pipes. But in this case she came back with a Ziplock bag stapled shut but full of pipe parts – bowls, stems, bands, cigar holders. A cursory look told me that there were at least 12-15 pipe bowls in the bag. The stems, bands and all were a bonus. It also looked like none of the stems fit the bowls in the bag so it was truly a grab bag. The price tag was a healthy $45 which is more than I usually like to pay for pipe parts but I decided to add that to the lot.

The staff took the bag and the opera pipe to the front of the store and I continued on the hunt through the rest of the shop. I purposefully wandered down several other aisles and found Chinese made knock off pipes covered in a thick lacquer, chewed up Dr. Grabows and other pipe racks and interesting pieces of tobacciana but nothing caught my eye until the end of one aisle about mid store. There was a glass display case with a batch of pipes that looked interesting. There on top of the display case, outside of the locked case was a little bulldog. I picked it up and turned it over in my hands. It was a GBD bulldog. The stem was in good shape. The bowl was okay with a slight blackening on one side. Upon examination it appeared to be a stain rather than a burn mark or an impending burnout. The stamping said that it was a New Standard. The price tag said the seller wanted $18 for it so I held on to it and went to get the staff person to open the case. Nothing else in the case caught my attention so I thanked her, she took the pipe and I moved on through the shop.

I finished my examination of the bottom floor and went upstairs to see if anything else could be found there. Sadly my luck had ended and there was nothing else that warranted more than a cursory look through the glass of the locked case. I came down the back stairway and looked a couple of other pipes in a case near the front of the shop. I had the clerk at the register open one of the cases for me and had a look at a couple of the pipes there and an old tin of Edgeworth that looked promising. It turned out to be empty so I went and found my daughter and we cashed out with our purchases.

When I got to our room at the place we were staying I took the bag out, opened it and emptied it on the table. I like to examine each piece I find and write down a quick inventory of what was there. In this case I looked over each pipe under the light of the overhead lamp. I wish I had brought along my jewelers loop to be able to look at the stampings with a magnifier but I had not. So as I picked through the parts I wrote down what was in the $45 grab bag. The list below gives my field inventory of the pipes.

1. CPF calabash that needs a stem and meer cup. The silver band was loose but bore the CPF stamp in the silver. The threaded tenon was bone and it was loose enough to unscrew. This one would clean up nicely once I ordered a meerschaum cup from Tim West.

2. Medico sand blast apple with a chewed stem. This stem was nylon and had a metal tenon. There were bite throughs on both the top and the bottom of the stem.

3. Older silver shank apple that really interested me. The shank end cap was ornate and a combination of silver and brass coloured bands. It was ornate and led me to believe that it had some age on it. There was no stem in the bag that fit. The end cap was loose. The bowl was in rough shape with major chunks of briar missing on the rim and some cracks in the top part of the bowl.

4. Old Pal French made Canadian that had the wrong stem jammed in the shank. The stem was as long as the whole pipe. The shank had been cracked by the wrong stem so it would need to be banded and a Canadian stem fit on the shank.

5. Planter opera with a silver band. It had hallmarks that I would have to look at when I got home. The band was loose and there was no stem on the pipe but it had some good-looking grain on the bowl and would clean up nicely.

6. Bent billiard with faint stamping in two lines. The initial letters of the first line were BAR over a second line that was stamped Imported Briar. I would need a loop to read the rest of the first line of stamping. This old bowl also needed a new stem and would take time to bring back to life. It had an aluminum insert in the shank and took a threaded tenon.

7. Imported briar bulldog with a metal tenon inserted into the shank. It came with a very thin and misfit stem so it would need a new stem. There was nothing remarkable about this pipe but it would clean up nicely.

8. Acorn shaped bowl that needed a stem. Again there was nothing remarkable about the pipe.

9. Medico prince/Rhodesian that was a good-looking piece of briar. It needed a stem and I was pretty sure that I had one that would fit the bill at home. It even had the M in the circle Medico logo stamped on the stem.

10. Royalton Smoke Control apple shaped pipe that had a patent number and some interesting grain. It had an aluminum apparatus in the shank that was patented. There was no stem on this one and it would be interesting to research what the original stem would have looked like. This one would be a good pipe mystery to search out.

11. Bentley Dublin that needed a stem. It had an aluminum insert and would take a metal threaded tenon on the stem. The finish was gone and the briar was clean. It looked like it potentially had some interesting grain on the bowl.

12. Willard Dublin with a metal band that was original. It needed a stem but would take a push stem as opposed to a threaded tenon. The finish on this one was not too bad and it would clean up nicely.

13. Weber _________ Junior in a bull moose shape that was intriguing. It was a chubby shanked bowl that had some amazing mixed grain. It would need a stem but would clean up nicely. There were some surface cracks in the flat surface of the rim that did not go to deep.

14. Maple bowl with a peg at the bottom that would sit into the shank of the original pipe. I had a walnut barrel pipe that my daughter had found at an antique shop in Vancouver and gifted me. It did not have a bowl but this one might just work on that piece. I would have to check it out when I got home.

15. MacArthur corn cob that needs a stem and shank to make it complete. I believe these are available to order from Missouri Meerschaum and it can be repaired to new condition. It was unsmoked and very clean.

16. Handful of stems with a variety of stampings – none of which matched the bowls in the lot. There was a silver band with hallmarks that did not come off of the bowls either. It was in good shape and would join my other bands. There was a tiny bowl made of maple with a shank and stem sitting loose in the bag. Finally there were two cigar holders – one looked old and appeared to be made of Bakelite while the other was newer and clearly plastic.

After looking over the inventory of the bag of pipe parts I was pretty happy with the $45 cost of the grab bag. There were a lot of bowls that would clean up nicely and the stems, bands and sundry parts would certainly go into my parts bins and be incorporated in future pipe repairs. I separated the gourd calabash from the lot and bagged it separately as well as the stems and other parts. I put the bowls back in the bag and then put the bags of stems and parts in as well. I could not wait to get home and begin to work on them. These would be fun to restore and held a lot of lessons that could be learned from their restoration.