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Balkan Sobranie

Holy Smokes Batman ! This must be gold

(35 posts)

Started 3 months ago by Mick
Latest reply from smooth

Mick

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if anyone's looking for the original Balkan Sobranie... apparently it's out there.

But you better come with a fat wallet

http://www.ebay.com/itm/BALKAN-SOBRANIE-1950s-ERA-FOUR-OUNCE-CUTTER-TOP-FULL-SEALED-TIN-PIPESTUD-/390384497549?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item5ae4bab38d#ht_997wt_1039

"The fact is, squire, the moment a man takes to a pipe, he becomes a philosopher. It's the poor man's friend; it calms the mind, soothes the temper, and makes a man patient under difficulties. It has made more good men, good husbands, kind masters, indulgent fathers, than any other blessed thing on this universal earth."
-"Sam Slick, the clockmaker" aka T.C.Haliburton

Posted 3 months ago #
Chris

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Nice - what a find! Can't imagine having to explain that purchase to my wife...

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else. -- C. S. Lewis, Theologian, Philosopher, Professor, Pipe smoker.

Posted 3 months ago #
Spartan

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It's at $89 an ounce! hahahahahaha That's nuts.

But if you've got the cash to burn why not? It's just money.

"I was born to lose. So I'll die to win." -Breaking Benjamin

Posted 3 months ago #
flyfishn

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But if you've got the cash to burn why not? It's jsut money

True that. You can't take it with you when you die.

Posted 3 months ago #
thesmokindragon

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I got about 1/4 of an oz gifted to me by a good friend, it was one of
a kind and I shall never forget the smoking experience it gave...but
paying the kind of coin they want for it...I can always find another love

Posted 3 months ago #
tokerpipes

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i don't know if its just to expensive to smoke or if it would taste just that good?

And personally if i did have it i would be smoking it on my death bed and then request i be cremated and buried in it for sure. the definition of a true pipe smoker

If you can't pack it, light it, and smoke it then why do it. It's a dieing art that must be rekindled in all of us as fortold by our forefathers.

Words to live by for all pipe smokers.

Posted 3 months ago #
jchaplick

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14 bids too

Congress seems to believe that 'Children are our future' is a phrase coined by tobacco advertisers.
Jef I. Richards

Posted 3 months ago #
jship079

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Lets say you get 10 bowls a OZ that's 10 dollars a bowl maybe its because I have smoked cigars for so long but 10$ for a hour or more of smoking pleasure really aint that bad the hard parts are these there is some really good tobacco for 1 to 2 dollars a ounce and the dropping of 400 dollars all at once.

Posted 3 months ago #
tokerpipes

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Wow Pipe Studs got several Sealed Tins of Balkan

Posted 3 months ago #
smokenscotch

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Wow, very cool. If you have the coin, that's really not that bad. Life is short, enjoy it.

Posted 3 months ago #
nsfisher

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wow quite a price for sure, does anyone know how much it used to cost when it was current?

Now i gotta larn how to reed and rite good

Posted 3 months ago #
kcghost

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With almost three days to go the price will only go up. Bid early and often they say. No news whatsoever on BS bringing this kind of price tag.

I'll tell you now if I ever see another 4 ounce tin of Cope's Escudo I will mortgage my house and sell my first born (hope her husband doesn't mind) to get the cash to acquire that.

Posted 3 months ago #
tokerpipes

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Any one want to go in on it? If enough of us pooled the funds together we might get a puff or two each?

Posted 3 months ago #
Mick

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I did some quick math.. stupid, but funny as heck at the same time.

A barrel of oil today is at $99. You'd get 3.6 barrels of crude or 150 gallons (that's almost 600 liters for you non-US people) for the current bidding price.
A barrel of oil gives roughly 20 gallons of gasoline. (The numbers vary wildly from 19 to 28, depending on type of crude, etc.. so let's keep it easy).

So, the current bidding price is about 70 gallons worth (or 280 liters of gas) of gasoline fuel. I know that's not the price at the pump The price at the pump today in Texas is actually closer to $3.3 / gallon, so it's a little over 100 gallons here in Texas. But it's cooler to do it with crude since the European gas prices are so much different.

4 Oz. of baccy.. 70 gallons of gasoline... but you can't put gasoline in your pipe

Anyways, just though I'd bore you to death with this..

PS: Silver is at $34 / ounce. Gold still over $1,700. So it's not quite up there with gold (yet)

Posted 3 months ago #
pawpaw

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makes me wonder what i might have been able to sell my tin of Revelations for.

Posted 3 months ago #
ohin3

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I could never spend that kind of dough on a tin of tobacco, but I would love to have a bowl just to try it.

Posted 3 months ago #
Al

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It will be fun watching that one!

Al
My Pipes:

Posted 3 months ago #
ejames

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4 oz of BS-- or 12 tubs of PA and CH. Not a hard decision for me!

Posted 3 months ago #
rock

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The can itself is what is so valuable, the tobacco is just a bonus if it still good.

Posted 3 months ago #
pawpaw

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rock pal you are wrong sorry, this if from a dude that has smoke 85 year old tobacco and it was like no tobacco i have smoked before. i am sure that tin has some wonderful tobacco to be smoked and the tin will be the keepsake to remember it by

Posted 3 months ago #
igloo

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Not for me . I often wonder if it was so darn good then why did it go out of production . I would still like a bowl if it was offered just to say I had smoked it . Sometimes people lament for things in thier past to me this is one of those things .

“There was an awful suspicion in my mind that I'd finally gone over the hump, and the worst thing about it was that I didn't feel tragic at all, but only weary, and sort of comfortably detached.”

Posted 3 months ago #
zanthal

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4 Oz. of baccy.. 70 gallons of gasoline... but you can't put gasoline in your pipe [;-)]

But if you've got the cash to burn why not? It's just money.

Can't imagine smoking money either.

Now the question is ... does the stuff age well?

"Under all speech that is good for anything, there lies a silence that is better. Silence is deep as eternity; speech is shallow as time."

Thomas Carlyle

Posted 3 months ago #
juni

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So what blend(s) should we stock up on now so we can sell them in a few decades for big bucks? I can't really think of any myself.

Posted 3 months ago #
smooth

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All is relative. That same money being bid probably wouldn't even buy a 'Popeye the Sailor' lunch box.

Posted 3 months ago #
tiltjlp

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The interesting thing is that even if the winner posts about smoking it on a forum, I wonder if he/she would admit if it was a horrid experience. If you spend that much, could you be honest enough to say you wasted your money?

John : The CobFather : Have Cobs, Will Smoke

Posted 3 months ago #
jpberg

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Garfinkels Orient Express, Gallahers Latakia, Sullivan Powell Gentlemans Mixture - there's lots of tobacco that sells at about the fifty dollar/oz. price when the moon is in the right phase.

I buy it when I've got money, and I watch it pass me by when I don't.

Posted 3 months ago #
portascat

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As someone who also smoked some of that 85 year old smoke, I could only assume this tin to be excellent.

As a side note, the difference between the Revelation and the modern "Epiphany "is like Knob Creek whiskey to a quart of Mad Dog.

"To seek freedom is the only driving force I know. Freedom to fly off into that infinity out there."

Posted 3 months ago #
Chris

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I often wonder if it was so darn good then why did it go out of production .

There's a very good interview with Craig from C&D that Kevin did here. He talks a bit about sources and particular crop years. I know that's one reason.

Posted 3 months ago #
pawpaw

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So what blend(s) should we stock up on now so we can sell them in a few decades for big bucks? I can't really think of any myself

well i think there are a couple of GL Please blends that may be worth saving also i think a tin of todays EMP or Nightcap may have some value in 20-40 years also several tins of your favorite SG blends you never know

Posted 3 months ago #
hnryclay

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It seems to me that a blend lives and dies by reputation alone. When I first started smoking people absolutely hated Erinmore. To the point of it being the butt of every joke, the pipe salt treatment was first tossed about on Pipes digest to get rid of Erinmore ghosts. Now people like it..... Bengal Slices is another blend that people did not really care for then on the net, but now is sought after. PCCA blends were very big when I started smoking because of certain people inside the pipe smoking community. Now they are gone. The first time I heard about cellering tobacco was in reference to PCCA blends, and the Mclelland's 1999 Christmas cheer. I think pipe smoking is such a small fraternity that a few people with high standing in the fraternity can really change the way the majority of smokers feel about certain blends. That can drastically change the value of a tin that someone put back. A good review by the right person hitting certain sentimental notes can make a tin of otherwise decent VA PER blended tobacco seem like the smoke of Olympus. I'm not saying Balken was not great, just not to the legendary price it has achieved. I feel the exact same way about wine, look at the way pinots were priced after a certain movie a few years ago. Cigars suffer the same disease, with the ratings scale and Cigar mags. Smoke what you like, write honest reviews, cellar what you want to smoke in a few years, and hope someone noteworthy waxes poetic about it, so you can sell it for 20 times what you paid for it...

Posted 3 months ago #
juni

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Basicly just smoke what you have since the future is impossible to predict. Although you might get a good price just because the tins will be aged ten or twenty years from now.

Posted 3 months ago #
jpberg

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It's all pretty subjective, and funny. I got a ten year old 50g tin of McClelland #25 the other day. 7.50 on ebay. That tin would smoke wonderfully today, and will be sublime when I open it in 10 years or so.

I'm in a bit of a bidding war for a tin of Bohemian Scandal, it will top 100 dollars before it's done. Is it really worth thirteen times the price of the #25? To me, yes, to alot of people it's sheer stupidity. C'est la vie.

Posted 3 months ago #
Mick

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Just FYI, it ended up going for $510. Or roughly $127.5 an ounce...

Now hat's some expensive stuff

Posted 3 months ago #
jpberg

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Expensive indeed, but that guy will be smoking some rarified air, or at the least, have a nice paperweight until he decides to open it.

Posted 3 months ago #
smooth

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Whoever bought it surely did so as an investment. Probably not even a pipe smoker. It will be up for sale again in the future.

Posted 3 months ago #

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Holy Smokes Batman ! This must be gold

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