A number of threads have pointed out the astonishing prices asked for some pipes, some of these fairly nice but not in that price range, others junky but priced into the thousands. A friend familiar with the online market for book sales has observed this in books and came up with an astute suggestion. This may be a money laundering scheme for taking dirty drug or other criminal money and channeling it into seemingly legitimate commerce. So perp one pre-arranges to sell a vastly overpriced pipe to perp two to settle some criminal deal, and suddenly they are just a couple of old pipe collectors trading on a fine old pipe, for $8 K; if the deal is bigger, they just trade the necessary number of pipes. So next time you see an ordinary pipe for a really high price, it may not be phishing for a confused pipe-buying sucker, but a way to put a smoke screen around a deal that has nothing to do with tobacco pipes. This may not explain all such instances, but possibly quite a few.
