About Dunhill DR Specially Selected

[forciori]

I woke up this morning with a very nice surprise - an email from a Chinese guy, named Wang Ye.

He wanted more information about one of his pipes.
It was an unbelievable D.R grade G especially selected by Alfred Dunhill, and he didn't even know. Not only that, but the pipe is also (since it doesn't have the underline and look like as the 60s stamps) dated from '66, which makes it even more special, because Alfred Dunhill died on January 2, 1959, and Alfred Henry Retired in 61 (as far as I know, at the time, the business was managed by Mary Dunhill).

So, all indications are that selection was (possibly) made before that. Perhaps in the late 1950s? A reserve that was made available years later? (It was a very exclusive piece). I don't want to believe it was a posthumous addition without Alfred Dunhill selecting. A more reasonable possibility would be that: instead of '66, it was from '56 (Alfred Dunhill was alive), but the stamp does not match the period.

An incredible and fascinating pipe!

All best,
Yang : :

 

[Briar Baron]

All seems good, unless he offers to sell it to you......

 

[georged]

The word "specially" isn't spelled with two s's, even in England.

You're being played, I think.

 

[bluegrassbrian]

The word "specially" isn't spelled with two s's, even in England.

You're being played, I think.

Yeah lol I noticed that but the glare makes it hard to read.
How on earth is that stamp spelled?

 

[ssjones]

Ah, now I see it, "Spesically". Yes, that looks quite odd.

That nomeclature picture is now in the Pipedia section on Dunhill DR's and attibuted to a "Yang".

File:27315341.jpg - Pipedia

pipedia.org

 

[lightmybriar]

Ah, now I see it, "Spesically". Yes, that looks quite odd.

That nomeclature picture is now in the Pipedia section on Dunhill DR's and attibuted to a "Yang".

File:27315341.jpg - Pipedia

pipedia.org

I think the C in “SPECIALLY” is catching the light strange and is obscured by a bit of birdseye. It’s definitely not an S, as it doesn’t match the other two Ss in the stamp. Looks perfectly legitimate to me, but I certainly can see how this photo can make it appear to look suspect.

 

[lightmybriar]

Everything else about the pipe appears perfectly legitimate in the photos as well, including the grain. I don’t think there’s anything to worry about, although I’m sure we’d all love to see more pictures!

 

[sablebrush52]

I think the C in “SPECIALLY” is catching the light strange and is obscured by a bit of birdseye. It’s definitely not an S, as it doesn’t match the other two Ss in the stamp. Looks perfectly legitimate to me, but I certainly can see how this photo can make it appear to look suspect.

I copied the image and enlarged it on my monitor in Photoshop. I concur with your conclusion.

 

[ssjones]

I corrected the title. I'd also love to see additional pictures - what we see of that grain does look amazing.

 

[greeneyes]

It's interesting that this guy had such a special pipe and he didn't know. As with any hobby it's just a little suspicious I suppose.

 

[oldgeezersmoker]

There are enough normalcies about that piece to raise eyebrows. In the 1983-5 time period, a number of pipes that had some association with the old Dunhill works came in to the US market. Some stamps ended up in the possession of employees who had worked there, as did pipes that weren’t, for one reason or another, finished.

Richard Esserman wrote as comprehensive an article as has ever been published for the very last issue of The Pipe Smokers Ephemeris onthese counterfeit pipes. There were still unanswered questions back then. This unfortunate episode is no longer on the radar screens of 95%+ of Dunhill collectors. But it should be. There were a number of pipes out there with stamps that might have been at one time or another in the possession of the Dunhill factory. The same is true of unfinished pipes. Some US collectors got stuck with these pieces. That they got offloaded to overseas collectors is no surprise. Not saying this particular piece is fish or fowl.

 

[georged]

Yeah, the whole "fake" Dunhills drama of the early/mid 80's is a quasi-philosophical one that's more about terminology than anything else.

If a pipe is made by Dunhill workers in the Dunhill shop using Dunhill materials... but after hours and without authorization... is it a TRUE Dunhill?

Some collectors say yes, others say no.

It was basically a labor/pay dispute, where a small group of workers decided to get satisfaction by making and selling unauthorized pipes on the side and pocketing the proceeds.

An entertaining twist is that to get the best price for them, the overall quality and workmanship of the "fakes" was several clicks better than standard production. The shapes were also the rarest ones.

I have no idea if the subject pipe of this thread is connected to that midnight operation, but it's possible.

Thanks to Jesse for using his Imaging Magic to determine that the "s" is actually a "c". Something like that would scream low-rent Chinese fake. (In this case an existing decent pipe with a bogus stamp, not an made-from-the-ground-up fake.)

(Many) more and (much) better photos are necessary to be able to move forward here, I think.

 

[oldgeezersmoker]

If a pipe is made by Dunhill workers in the Dunhill shop using Dunhill materials... but after hours and without authorization... is it a TRUE Dunhill?

Some collectors say yes, others say no.

It was basically a labor/pay dispute, where a small group of workers decided to get satisfaction by making and selling unauthorized pipes on the side and pocketing the proceeds.

According to Rich Esserman’s research, the story that seems to be true was that the pipes in question were made after the workers were terminated when the old works closed. The size of the group was unknown. Bill Taylor and Les Woods always denied that they had any part of this operation, and there is no reason for me to doubt that, but I have heard that after a few pints Bill would tell you who was involved.

An entertaining twist is that to get the best price for them, the overall quality and workmanship of the "fakes" was several clicks better than standard production. The shapes were also the rarest ones.

Some were, many, on closer inspection, had issues. Some shape numbers were made up, but the numbers were clumsily applied.

If anybody truly wants to advance the ball and collect well informed, reasonably comprehensive, and much more closely contemporaneous knowledge about this issue, and share it, they might contact Richard and ask him if he has a copy of the above referenced article and for permission to publish it. He writes a regular contribution to the NASPC magazine and his email address can be found there. I imagine he would give permission for it to be shared.

 

[georged]

I just got off the phone with one of Bill's long-time American friends. (Not a "long distance" one, but a guy who lived in Europe and physically visted often.)

In a nutshell, Bill refused to speak of the situation categorically beyond confirming that virtually all of Dunhill's hundreds of stamps disappeared in the course of a moving operation around 1980.

Where is Inspector Clouseau when you need him?

 

[ssjones]

Here's the Loring article on the fake Dunhills:

The 1980s Fake Dunhill - Pipedia

pipedia.org

 

[oldgeezersmoker]

Here's the Loring article on the fake Dunhills:

The 1980s Fake Dunhill - Pipedia

pipedia.org

The Esserman article from The Pipe Smoker’s Ephemeris is also worth some effort to find. For some reason, I am locked out of my Drop Box account; it says that my email address which hasn’t changed in 20 years no longer works or something like that and I am not in the mood to try to fix the problem.

 

[oldgeezersmoker]

I just got off the phone with one of Bill's long-time American friends. (Not a "long distance" one, but a guy who lived in Europe and physically visted often.)

In a nutshell, Bill refused to speak of the situation categorically beyond confirming that virtually all of Dunhill's hundreds of stamps disappeared in the course of a moving operation around 1980.

Where is Inspector Clouseau when you need him?

View attachment 32692

There was a show at the Crystal City VA Marriott in the early to mid 1990’s that Bill attended. He did discuss the situation during the cocktail hour at a table where I and others were sitting, but he specifically said that he had nothing to do with it. I came away with the distinct feeling that more had been made than had seen the light of day at the time the Loring article was written.

There are only a few Dunhill collectors I would trust to “rule” on whether a suspect pipe is a genuine Dunhill factory product, original to the era it purports to be from. You have no doubt talked to the same one I would call first.

But I never played with big dollar Dunhills. It was a fascinating exercise, though, to go to my very first pipe show in 1985 and walk into a room that was dominated by buzz about the Dunhills being queer that were passed off for big $ after the 1984 show. By two respected collectors.

The bad blood and finger pointing that Loring points out, were very long lasting. People who I was convinced, based on their prominence from reading things like the Ephemeris, knew the pipes were fake, defended them, but very cagily left themselves an out. I eavesdropped on any number of these conversations

Why didn’t they just come out and say the pipes were phony? Well, maybe embarrassment at having been fooled the previous year. Maybe so they or their friends, who had purchased the pipes at sky high prices on their endorsement, could get out from under them.

Whatever the reason, I learned that a lesson I knew from another hobby applied to pipe collecting: anything that is worth counterfeiting will be counterfeited.

 

[mingc]

What a fascinating story. A bunch of working class Londoners banding together to get one over their bosses and to swindle some rich Americans. This needs to be made into a movie with Michael Caine in it!

 

[sablebrush52]

After the various threads here about high priced Danish fakes being sold on eBay I would be very suspicious about buying there. I remember the thread about a fake Bo Nordh that eBay was contacted about by several members of this forum, and Marty Pulvers got involved in trying to get it stopped, and eBay did nothing. The fake sold for $8300. One of the ugliest, most misshapen doorstops ever to disgrace a chunk of mediocre wood. And there was an awful Jess pipe whose stampings appeared to have been carried out by a palsied chimpanzee, that went for around $3700.

The Dunhill fakes that often turn up are the smooth pipes stamped with a "shell" stamping.

Caveat emptor, baby!

 

[oldgeezersmoker]

After the various threads here about high priced Danish fakes being sold on eBay I would be very suspicious about buying there. I remember the thread about a fake Bo Nordh that eBay was contacted about by several members of this forum, and Marty Pulvers got involved in trying to get it stopped, and eBay did nothing. The fake sold for $8300. One of the ugliest, most misshapen doorstops ever to disgrace a chunk of mediocre wood. And there was an awful Jess pipe whose stampings appeared to have been carried out by a palsied chimpanzee, that went for around $3700.

The Dunhill fakes that often turn up are the smooth pipes stamped with a "shell" stamping.

Caveat emptor, baby!

The 1984 fakes won ribbons. At a show. Where they were personally inspected. Handled. Fondled. Oohed and aahed over. By “experts.” People who “knew” as much about Dunhills as some do today about, oh, say, Barling. eBay was 11 years in the future.