Couple more newbie questions

Are you planning on selling your newly acquired estate Kaywoodie's or smoking them? That would be my criteria.

1. I think an open tin keeps tobacco fresh for about a month, although there are a lot of variables in play.
2. Not exactly a huge investment, so I would do whatever makes them smoke the best.

I always put an open tin right into a mason jar, unless I want to dry out the tobacco a little before I jar it.

If you plan on using the pipes try it with the stinger if you don't like it cut it off. if you plan to sell it keep it on because you will get more for it original then altered

Crusher, the "best" stingers pull right out and you can label and store them should you re-sell or

pass along the pipe. Others can be sawed out but lose their original design, which is a good reason

to buy pipes without stingers whenever possible. As you likely know, the Drinkless Kaywoodies have

the stinger as part of the screw-on stem and cannot be removed; also, they are often misaligned so

don't screw on so the bit is perpendicular to the bowl, a rather sad mis-design feature. I go for pipes

without stingers whenever possible. Kaywoodie does make new pipes with push bits, such as the

Saxon series, which I prefer to their Drinkless, although you do have to hunt for them.

The place I keep my jars is in a cold place, I keep OTC pouches in mason jars and they keep almost indefinitely it seems but my tins will last a few months. so I only have a FEW tins open at a time.

be warned though eventually we ALL get to a point where we have too much tobacco to smoke and you will learn about the joys of re hydrating hahaha.

I think opened tins can keep the tobacco fine for a months. I have a tin of Frog Morton on the Bayou that I transferred to a jar, but left some in the tin since I couldn't fit it all into the half-pint jar. I've had it since December/January and I opened the tin last night out of curiosity and the tobacco was still fairly moist. Dry, of course, but it didn't crumble to dust when I squeezed it.
But of course, always transfer to a jar.

Well I'm here to provide a different point of view: that tins themselves are pretty good to keep the moisture in. But of course we can't cover it by a simple word "tin" as there are some varieties of it. First and most common, a tin like dunhill EMP, peterson old dublin, etc etc. these kind of tin keeps most moisture in for a long long time. I have an opened tin of balkan sasieni and I decided that I didn't like it so I leave it like that for about a year. And a few days ago when I tried to give it another try, the tobacco is wet. The second kind of tin is that of GLP and some others. My experience with this kind of tin is limited so my suggestion would be to jar it or smoke it really quick once you open it. And the last type of tin I ever countered is the flake tin. While the tin design itself is not great, the flakes are normally more wet and more dense so they balanced each other pretty well.

And a little tip if you open a bunch of tins at once and smoke them. The drying process is a curve related to the amount of tobacco left in the tin. When you start a new tin you can try a new bowl and leave the open tin (but ALWAYS closed when you are not smoking it) for some time; however, when you're half way down the tin, you need to rush down a little bit. Just throwing in my 2 cents.

All good input. Along these lines, I just today ordered quart and gallon sized Mylar bags. I keep too many tins open and have to hydrate them. My hope is that storing opened tins in Mylar will keep the tobacco fresh a while longer.

I think a lot depends on the blend in question and how you like your tobacco, moister or dryer personally, I jar everything within a day of opening it and bulks the day the arrive. If I want it dryer than it comes I air out a bowls worth at a time but that's just me.
The pipes will have more value if you don't cut off the stingers. And you never know how long you'll kee one. If you keep it 20 days or 20 years and end up selling it you'll thank yourself for not clipping them. Misaligned stems are easy to fix: Heat them with a blow dryer until the glue loosens and screw the stem on turning it until it aligns properly then let it cool for half an hour- all fixed! Passing a cleaner isn't an issue IMHO; most of the moisture is between the stinger and button so cover the bowl with your thumb and flick your wrist: gurgle gone. And if it's resll damp smoking just unscrew it and stick a cleaner (and maybe your poker tool) in the shank: all better. Kaywoodie hasn't been doing this 100 or so years with such a huge following of smokers for no reason; their pipes and system smoke really well as designed.

I think the question of the maximum time that tobacco will not get stale or dry in a tin is the wrong question. Why not take the money that you paid for good tobacco more seriously and jar everything? 8 oz for tins, pints for bulk, packed moderately, leaving some airspace at the top. There are those who claim the airspace is needed for aging, yet I question why that a certain amount of oxygen is needed as opposed to the inevitable oxygen in the jar from any style of jar filling; but as I'm no expert I do so anyway.

Using the 8 oz jars means that I can enjoy the tobacco over any length of time, not having to consider how long it has been since I opened the tin.