$24 Marxman Squared Tall Pot

[Briar Lee]

I try and not buy duplicates of Marxman pipes (so much) anymore but this one resembles no shape I’ve seen yet. I say it’s a squared tall pot, almost a chimney.

$24 delivered, $15 plus $9 postage and taxes to the dad blasted gubbermint.





Look how nice the button and stem are. This is how I grade condition more than any other one factor. That oxidation will be gone five minutes after I unwrap it.

 

[didimauw]

I just love looking at these dirty old pipes. This one looks like a great specimen!

 

[Briar Lee]

I just love looking at these dirty old pipes. This one looks like a great specimen!

By the lava on the rim, it was smoked quite a bit.

By the pristine condition on the button and stem it was babied and loved.

Note how the coloring of Algerian briar was razor thin, as per the chip:



If they were meerschaums, there would be zero argument or doubt the smoke colored them by traveling through the walls and collecting on the polished and waxed exterior.

That chip will color right back in dozen smokes or less.

 

[Briar Lee]

10 minutes will turn any old Marxman with a pristine stem and button into a lifetime possession that no billionaire could own a pipe that smoked or looked any better.



This one turned out to be a medium smooth square panel, likely a shade too small to grade as a Benchmade.

It cleaned up to nearly new, inside and out, the chamber back to clean brown briar.

It’s perfect in every way, no fills. flaws or ripples and highly figured cross grain all over, with perfect deep strikings.

It’s hard to date one. I’d guess this one much closer to 1934 than 1953.

 

[Peter Turbo]

that no billionaire could own a pipe that smoked or looked any better.

Sure they could, if they bought a $24 marxman and spent 10minutes on it.

 

[Briar Lee]

Sure they could, if they bought a $24 marxman and spent 10minutes on it.

We know they had machines in 1934.

Just seven carvers, and Bob (who couldn’t carve nothin’) and up front Helen and however many girls she needed. All this in the trough of the worst depression in the history of the world in the highest cost place on the planet to make a pipe, downtown New York City. Bob was 29 in 1934.

And this happy little outfit wound up making the most expensive factory cataloged pipe on this earth and matched Kaywoodie grade for grade, and after Kaywoodie went broke and sold out, the next year Bob and Helen cashed in and lived happily ever after, in 1953, when Bob was 48.

Later that year came the Recession of 1953 and the next year the Berbers who dug the briar in Algeria for their French overlords rose up and starting killing every Frenchman who didn’t hide or leave.

By then Bob was 49, selling pipes for Mastercraft, and life was sweet indeed.

No billionaire could buy a new pipe with backstory like that.

Especially not one that’s obviously hand made, at 27 West 24th Street 10, New York, New York.