Shutterbugg, stunning pipes!! I think you found two supurb pipes that should smoke wonderfully! Please do provide an update on how they smoke!
Got them Friday (they traveled from overseas). I looked for some indication of date of manufacture on them or the packaging but there was none I could find. However just going by the type fonts and graphics on the box and enclosed instruction sheets, it feels like mid to late 50s or very early 60s, which jibes with the time the company flourished.
The little drawstring socks covering the bowls are genuine chamois. The stems are vulcanite with threaded aluminum tenons which are pitch-adjusted perfectly so the stems stop at the proper orientation when fully tightened. That's especially remarkable with the bulldog, as the sides and points of the diamond-shaped stem are quite unforgiving of alignment error. Just in case, the aluminum tenons have a blade notch in the end, and there are instructions included which detail how to adjust the tenon if the stems should ever need re-aligning.
The inside of the bowls is darkened, so it would be easy to mistake them for briar. The bulldog is a tad shinier than the prince, no idea why, but otherwise they are equal in quality. The drilling is precise and correct, the bits are properly polished and smooth to the tongue. These are high-quality pipes in every respect.
These are NOS unsmoked, but as meers don't need any break-in and shouldn't even be allowed to form a legit cake, it's fair to say the way they smoke on day one is the way they're going to smoke always. These two both smoked sweet and dry from the first. No gurgle or need to pipeclean it much mid-smoke despite the aluminum tenons which generally tend to condense out moisture like stingers. And the aluminum doesn't impart even a subtle change in tobacco flavor, as I have known it to do on other pipes including Falcons.
I smoked Dunhill VA Flake, Amphora Red, DNR and my VA Cream+BCA mixture in both pipes with no noticeable cross contamination despite not resting the pipe between smokes.
These are awesome pipes, and I would highly recommend if you find one in good shape to snatch it up. While I like those intricately-carved meers and watching them slowly bronze, for a nice, utilitarian pipe with all the benefits of block meerschaum, these Countrymen are really hard to beat.
