Sasieni Prices Seem Off?

I have. I have also seen some notable eBay sellers setting "buy it now" prices well north of $160 for 4 dots. To be honest, I've seen the prices climbing on mid-20th century English made factory pipes for over a year now. With quality pipes in serious need of restoration selling for $50+ for GBD, Comoy and higher for Sasieni... let's not even talk about Dunhills.
-- Pat

By off do you think the prices are too high? Sasieni made very good pipes, excellent smokers. Generally speaking, the prices for all the older English brands have been very strong. Barling's, Dunhill, Sasieni, Comoy's, Charatan's, Loewe, the older pipes are like real estate, they are not making any more of them!

ya i did also was bidding on a nice craggy dublin for my collection and boom from 35$ tp 130$ in no time. It was a shocker

snag:
If you're going after some of these pipes, just be sure you know your Sasieni facts -- and you trust your vendors. There are older, sought-after four dots and then there are newer four dots -- which are really good pipes, but not in the same league. (I have a "newer" four-dot from around 2004 and it's one of my favorite pipes. But it was only about $50 brand new.)
FWIW, I don't think $25-35 is unreasonable at all for a Sasieni second (or lower grade), especially if it has the Sasieni name stamped on it. I have a Claret like that; has a fill or two but smokes very well.
Bob

The other thing about Sasieni, in terms of relative rarity, and hence price, are the pre-war pipes, and the pipes from the immediate post war period.

By off do you think the prices are too high? Sasieni made very good pipes, excellent smokers. Generally speaking, the prices for all the older English brands have been very strong. Barling's, Dunhill, Sasieni, Comoy's, Charatan's, Loewe, the older pipes are like real estate, they are not making any more of them!

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I've only really been watching the estate pipe market for about 14 months, but I've seen prices on these brands all climb. Without a doubt, there are some real gems in every brand/factory named above, and that the golden age of factory pipes may well have been from the turn of the 20th century into the late 1960s. None of those pipes are, truly, being made anymore so folks who want them, will pay for them.
That being said, many of those pipes have been puffed on like smokestacks, had the top 1/16" of their rims charred to a crisp, been saturated with Mixture 79 and saliva or been used to breed spiders. The simple truth is folks are buying pipes of this generation from these factories, of any condition/quality, and paying more for the pleasure today than they were a year (and probably more than a year) ago.
There are always deals to be had for the eBay buyer who turns over every stone, looks through every photo, and has a net of searches on eBay sites from multiple countries. But the deal is the exception today, that's for sure.
I for one intend to keep looking,
-- Pat

I've gone down the ebay route a couple of times, all with buy it now options to avoid bidding wars, and I guess I just don't have the patience for it. I also spent 3 hours antiquing yesterday and came up with 4 old Dr. Charles briar pipes that were in horrendous shape and ugly as sin, at $10 each I laughed and kept on walking. I guess other than site sponsors and other reputable resellers I'll stick to new pipes. Besides, I'm all thumbs and have no skill whatsoever for restoring pipes.

I've only been watching for about 2 years now, but I'm seeing pipes that I used to be able to grab for $15-$35 now go for twice that lately.
I am not privy to any actual data, but it seems I run across more restoration threads these days then in the past. Seems like there used to be more threads on who to send pipes to in order for them to be repaired then there are lately. Admittedly that's just a hip shot on my part.
However personally, with the presence of guides, videos, forums, etc I wonder if it just isn't easier for people to get into the hobby and restorations then before. I mean I teach myself all sorts of new things from home repairs to video game strategy's from the internet.
I built 90% of my collection from good solid pipes no one else wanted to restore. (It's not a half bad collection, IMO) Now it just seems people are just willing to pay just a bit more then they used to.

My favorite saying about eBay ." ... eBay is the one way to guarantee that you pay the absolute maximum of what an item is worth. "

I have also noticed the prices for the English brands steadily going up over the last year plus. I went through my English phase about 2 years ago and ended up selling almost all of them off as I found better pipes for my tastes to smoke. I would take a Castello, Radice and Ardor over any British pipe I have smoked. I would also take an estate Rad or Brian Ruthenberg or Scott Thile or many other American artisans over the British. I found that the draws, i.e shank dimensions and stems were too constrictive for my tastes.

I have been bidding on American and English estates recently, putting in my maximum (figuring what new would run for) and been consistently outbid. And, I can guess by the auto bidding, that these folks were most likely prepared to go alot higher.
It has changed in the last year.

To be honest, I've seen the prices climbing on mid-20th century English made factory pipes for over a year now.

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I agree that most have been going up consistently. The notable exception for me is the Lane-era Charatans that seem to have held steady with a couple grades dipping in price and a couple grades rising in price. Makes me happy to have gotten my English pipes early on in my searches.
There are still good deals to be had though if you are lucky and do a lot of research.

Al, the Ashford shape seems to be much sought after. Having said that $295 seems steep $585 seems a little ridiculous. I think I would have a few questions for that price. Is/was the stem original? Most of the patent Four Dots I've seen have the diamond pattern. The dots are the smaller dots but in the equilateral pattern. I'm not saying it's not possible, but again, I would have had some questions.

Sasieni prices haven't really gone up all that much, but there are always examples where bidders with more desire and money than sense create outliers.
Looking at the Ashford bid history I see another example of a pattern I've witnessed any number of times. The winning bidder collects EVERYTHING, and lot of it. So this is someone with money to burn, burn, burn.
He or she puts in an extremely high maximum bid and then goes off to ski at Gstaad while the auction continues. Another bidder, having waited until seconds before the auction ends, dreaming of owning this very desirable shape, and seeing the price at a paltry $304 dollars, snipes only to be outbid. Before his mind can communicate with his fingers, he bids again, only to be outbid again. Result? Stratospheric price. Neither of the top bidders were specifically pipe collectors. Pipe collectors topped out at $304. This happens a lot.
4 dots for $165 to $220 on eBay are not uncommon if the condition is excellent, and the visual presentation is professional. Those kinds of prices have been pretty common over the past 6 years that I've been following Sasieni. True, you used to find very nice pipes at the $120-130 range, and I still occasionally see those. But some shapes just have more bidders. That Viscount Lascelles is a desirable model and I saw one with exceptional grain, go for about $2300 two or three years ago because two determined, well heeled, and stupid, collectors got into an insane bidding war.
Barling pots are the best Barlings, but a Canadian in similar condition will garner 2 to 3 times the price of a pot.
I have seen increasing incidences of very high prices on Barlings. And because a number of sellers contact me for information about the pipes they're putting up, I get to hear about who won. No surprise that a number of buyers are Asian. They love British pipes and they have the money to go after them. And, Barling is very highly esteemed. But it isn't just Asian buyers. There are European collectors who are building major collections and they will pay whatever they need to, to have something special.
One recent auction featured an unsmoked Barling billiard in its original box. The size was an "L", which means that it's a pretty small pipe, and it was 1950's or 1960's production. The pipe fetched over $700. To me, that's completely crazy, especially as, in the last 4 months, I bought two unsmoked Barlings, both 1940's production, (which means that they're also Algerian Briar) one in its original box, for slightly more than half that amount. Then there's the 1907 cased set, for which I paid a princely sum. But it's the bargain of the century compared to $700 for a late production "L".
I have a stack of Barling boxes. They can be bought for $8-10. Why spend a couple of "C" notes for a damned box?
Whether these prices constitute a trend, or are just aberrations, remains to be seen.
It's eBay. Wackiness abounds.

If it is a true family era Sasieni, the name "Four Dot" is written out on the wood and if it is a newer production (now made by Cadogan, I think?) then the name 4-Dot is stamped with the number on the wood. I have also noted that the newer 4-Dot Sasieni prices have spiked, but credit that to the fact that some bidders do not know how to discern the difference.
Pipestud