I want to know how the lover of Lee pipes knows: Briarlee was a sub brand but doesn't know that Gold Coast was also. Gold Coast pipes are in the same Lee catalog! Then there are also at least some other pipes marked with the same lion rampart stamping as Gold Coast and "Selected" or "Antique" which makes it very likely they are also very likely made by the Lee company. But "Pipemaker" pipes were a product of Mail Pouch. Come on!
There is one source that lists Gold Coast as a Lee sub brand, but I’ve never seen a Gold Coast. The advertisements I’ve seen show a $1 pipe sold through a department store chain, that has the capability to accept a filter or use a “condenser” (big stinger).
What leads me to suspect that Lee, was really Wally Frank are several things.
Wally Frank probably had the largest mail order pipe business in the United States, and Frank had the mailing lists to go with it.
The Lee screw stem looks to be an infringement on a Kaywoodie. On a Pipe Maker it’s a downright copy, although an improved one, with a removable stinger.
Look at this famous Wally Frank advertisement from the 1930’s
There’s no big briar shipments in early 1946 when somebody who makes Pipes by Lee launches what turned out to be a 25 year run of what appears to be a mail order pipe business, in downtown New York City, that caters to the top end of the pipe market.
I knew a One star Lee was a unicorn, but the vast majority of Lee pipes I own are Three Star pipes.
Of Wally Frank was Lee, he targeted his market as well as all the Facebook and Google marketing geniuses do today.
There’s a certain buyer who thinks that you should buy the middle, not the cheapest or the best. Lee hammered that market for $10 pipes in 1946. Yet he also sold quite a few of the most expensive regularly cataloged pipes on the earth, the $25 Lee Five Star grade.
But while we wait for my White Spot NOT FOR SALE to loft it’s way over the storm tossed Atlantic and safely find a safe haven near Bug Tussle, in the Lord’s own Missouri Ozarks, I have a question perhaps some, could help me with.
Someday, I might find the nearly mythical early 1946 Lee One Star.
Ot could fetch as much as $30 on eBay if it’s unsmoked in it’s original box, with accoutrements.
How did Lee, insert those 7 pointed stars he used until he raised the price, to $5 per star, switched over to a beautiful 5 pointed star, and started polishing the stems and pipes more?
You hardly find a 7 pointed Two Star, but if there is a real, genuine One Star out there, I’ll bet it only has the middle star.
The material is a gold and base metal mix, on early pipes, and it appears to have more gold content when they switch to 5 pointed stars.
And we all know thaf Mail Pouch made signs out of old barns, and Lee made Briarlees.
STORMS OF LIFE