Excited About a Lucky Day...

I'm so excited... today luck (for a pipe collector !) has been great...
Walking home from work (it's a nice 20 minutes walk in the center of Milano, Italy) I stumbled across an old tobacconist. I knew it but never entered...it didn't have pipes for show and therefore it never catched my interest.

But today I needed a lighter...so I walked inside....

Boy......We starded chatting about my habit of pipes smoking and the owner told me: "you know, I inherited some pipes from the old owner, some 15 years ago they traded pipes here"
He got all of my attention !!!
He opened a drawer and.....wwwwwooow.....
3 Petersons Supreme, 2 large silver mounted + 1 gold mounted NEW (of course the ebonite stems are horrible, but I have some nice ebonite polish paste at home...)
and 2 estate pipes, but in very very good conditions, probably smoked very few times as the interior of the bowl was mostly intact in the upper part, and only black (no cake) in the lower part: and this is good , they are:
1 Charatan Make Freehand relief gold mounted

+

1 Ashton Brindle (X)
Both of them rhodesian shape, little size, group 2 /3 dunhill
Well....for the 5 of them I paid half the price of a Supreme, he told me "if you want them...well I don't know anythung about pipes....30 euros each for the new ones, 20 for the used ones ? is it ok with you ?"
Guess what ? They are all safe at home...I have some polishing work to make on the peterson's stems, and little cleaning on the estates but they are in excellent shape...I'm so happppppppyyyyy
Some pictures later, light is horrible and I'm trying my best to catch some decent shots
Edit: Corrected capitalization in title per Rule #9. L.

Here are the 3 beautiful Peterson...the stems look better after some polish paste, but need a more accurate work...in picture they look ok, but they are not at all from real....anyway less bad than I thought...


(sorry for the pic quality guys, I know, it's horrible, I hope to get better ones in the morning light...)
Top one is XL20 shape, silver, then on the lower part the one on the left is a 69 shape, gold mounted, and right one XL14 silver mounted...

And here the other 2 babies

On top the Ashton Brindle, with a lovely cumberland stem, and then the Charatan with gold band...
I didn't resist and charged with Dunhill 965 and lighted up the big Pete XL14 coming home....

Yes, I think this happens once in a lifetime, and I would have never got them if I didn't need a Bic lighter, so I think I'm keeping the Bic lighter as a souvenir for the lucky day eheheheh

The most funny thing is I was almost embarassed when he told me the prices...I felt a bit like a thief...but hei...he made the price, I didn't ask...he just told me something like: you want them all? I don't know wht to do with them...
I guess business is not exactly the best thing he does in life...
Anyway XL20 is gonna be the Christmas present for a fellow pipe smoker friend here in Milano who loves Petersons, the remaining 4 are going to enter my rotation
The petersons date early '90s, at least the silver ones, the gold one I can't read the hallmarks even with the magnifying glass, I'm pretty sure it's 9k gold but the rest of the hallmarks is a mistery...

@Rothnh :

well, it's no sooo rare to find estate pipes, at least in Milano. Of course once there were many more tobacconists selling pipes. Now we "only" have 3 very good one: Al Pascià (I think you all know it's website), Noli (no webshop, but he has almost every shape and finish from Castello) and Savinelli (who also distributes Dunhill in Italy).
Many tobacconists had pipes 20 years ago, so...sometimes they have some leftover, maybe from the old owner etc. But most have been "raded" by pipe smokers already, so it's not easy to find.

I know one who has some very nice old Dunhill at 50% discount. I do not collect Dunhill (mainly Castello, Peterson and Ser Jacopo) so I'm not really interested, but some pipe smokers here in Milano often go visit...I guess the best ones are gone by now...
Noli buy estate pipes, so some times ago I purchased a wonderful estate Ser Jacopo Granato that I would have not easily bought as new...(around 600 usd as new!)
The same goes for Turin (home of Bollito pipe): there are many more tobacconist there having some great beauties, sometimes with big discounts...it's just a matter of having time to go visit, searching, etc.
The main difference is if they have a webstore (or ebay account) or not. If not, they usually aren't interested in pipes anymore and make huge discounts...I suspect that some websites offering new pipes from very old collections have just found some uninterest tobacconist more than willing to free up some space for cigarettes, candies etc.
But generally pipe smoking is no more as it was 20 /30 years ago. I think in USA it's coming back, but helas not in Italy :-(

@cigrmaster: in fact when i came out I was thinking going back...but during the purchase I was soooo excited about the pipes I just acted as a "robot" making my maths at speedlight and getting money out from my wallet fast as a thunder eheheheh