We said "pandemic be damned" this weekend! The wife wanted to get away from the house for at least a day so we drove over to the Mobile/Daphne/Fairhope, Alabama area to visit some of the antique/junktique shops over there.
Saw a couple of pipes at Cotton City Antiques in Mobile, but nothing I wanted.
Found a motherlode of pipes at the Daphne Antique Gallery - over 30 pipes in total plus a number of pipe racks and stands. Some of the racks had tobacco jars. Most of the pipes were the typical Kaywoodies or Dr. Grabows but I did see two Mastercrafts. What was more interesting was there were four new, never smoked pipes - 2 Savinelli's, a Rattray and a Big Ben for $75 or less. Again, nothing I felt like buying.
Went to two shops in Fairhope. The Copper Roof had about 15 junk pipes and a couple of interesting but overpriced pipe stands. I did find a six-pipe wall rack for $24 and I probably overpaid for it.
There are a lot of antique shops in Fairhope but the Copper Roof and Southern Antiques and Accents are the only two I usually find pipe stuff at. Southern Antique had four or five pipe racks with glass tobacco jars mostly priced at $65 each which seemed overpriced. The had one six pipe rack with a ceramic jar for $75. All the racks had the usual low-end pipes.
I've often talked about how these shops have either a tendency to overprice the items or completely misidentify the item and basically give it away. My purchase at Southern Antique was the latter in my opinion. I found a jar sitting in one booth tagged as "Italian Jar, $12." I noticed a rubber seal around the neck of the lid to make it airtight so I turned it over to see if it was stamped. The porcelain jar still had the Comoy's of London, Made in Italy tag on the bottom. After I paid for the jar and had the bag safely in my hand, I told the nice lady that it was a tobacco jar and could have been priced at $45 and would have sold.
