Actually, eBay can be a very good source for pricing. What you do is use the "advanced" search option - located to the right of the search button, type in your key words - the brand of pipe - and select "completed listings". You will see all completed auctions that have taken place for your brand over the past month or more. That will give you a range. But with eBay, there are additional factors that need to be taken into account. Established sellers like Briar Blues, Coopersark, Great Estates, and Treasurepipes tend to get better prices than lesser known sellers. Well presented pipes, as in excellent photography and description, get better prices. Condition matters and affects the value, and that's one area where sellers screw up by overstating condition. Different models and finishes result in different prices. Results also vary at different times of the year. For example, prices rise before Christmas, and drop afterwards. Bidder behavior can affect results.I'd think that eBay wouldn't really be a good gauge of pipe pricing, because it's an auction site. Maybe nobody is interested and gets a pipe for $25 when it's actually worth about $200. Likewise someone could end up getting into a bidding war and end up paying hundreds more for a pipe than it's worth.
Fair enough, but I like to look at the failures to see why they failed. I learn from all of it.Instead of using "completed listings" I always go straight for "sold listings". That way, you weed out the overpriced items, that never got a bid, from your search.
That's fine if they happen to have what you're looking for, but it's going to be a tiny cross section compared to what crosses eBay's worldwide borders over a period of time. And it's also only one person's opinion on pricing rather than an aggregate. And, I've beat that pricing by as much as 2/3rds on any number of occasions.If I want an estate pipe I just check smokingpipes.com's estate section. They do a superb job on the restoration and you can't get caught up in some insane bidding war and end up paying a lot more than you intended to or a lot more than the pipe is actually worth.