Thank you for the welcome. Unfortunately time constraints prevent me from visiting or contributing to forums on a regular basis. I wish I could devote more time to doing so.
I have had to take time out of my schedule to look more closely at what is going on, and what I have uncovered is at least suspicious and at most disturbing. I hope it will be worthwhile pursuing this for the sake of PROTECTING both the marketplace and unsuspecting buyers. I think we have to bear in mind that the practice is till continuing and will continue to do so as long as Ezrati is selling pipes. I therefore think that as pipe smokers, we have a responsibility to become involved in this issue to protect future fellow smokers who are unwittingly buying these pipes from their hard earned money.
Through this practice, he is not only besmirching the good name of Astley, but also that of Dunhill, Charatan, the Late Bill Taylor, Barry Jones, Colin Fromm, Ferndown and Les Wood - all that is great in the British pipe making industry. That is how deep this runs! He is using all these names in his descriptions and this is another reason why the pipe smoking community in general need to become involved, to bring a swift end to this practice. What direct action that can be taken is another matter. In the UK it is more likely to have action taken as a result from a complaint by a consumer.
I have brought Les Wood's name into this because of the suspicious silver work on the pipes. Please note that in no way am I implicating Les in any suspicious activity. After all, Les did all the silver work for Upshall, so if Ezrati sends him a batch of pipes and asks for silver bands or other silver decorations to be added, Les will oblige. There is a legal issue though with this silver work which I will go on to explain. This is what has again raised my suspicions in the sales I can find on the eBay system that are either currently for sale or have been sold recently in the limited time-scale that eBay allow us to look back to.
Firstly I would like to talk about the legal implcations of hallmarking in the UK. I have substantial experience in this area as my partner and I were previously involved in the jewellery trade. Hallmarks in the UK date back to 1558, so this is nothing new! It is a legal requirement that every single piece of precious metal (silver, gold or platinum)that is sold in the UK, requires an official hallmark which consists of a makers/sellers mark as well as the official Assay Office marks. We have our own seller/maker mark. Every one of these marks in the UK must be unique, and registered with the Assay Office. What this requires is that every piece of silver decoration MUST be sent to an offial Assay office, where the metal is scraped and chemically tested for its purity. It is then officially stamped by the Assay office with the symbol of the office that did the assay test, the symbol for the purity of the metal, and a date letter signifying when the piece was tested. Each piece of metal is independently tested and stamped which is why a pipe with a silver spigot, tenon and bowl cap will have an official hallmark on each piece. To sell anything in the UK which has precious metal content, without that being officially assay tested is illegal.
I can understand why Les Wood does not assay his silver work. Items that are being exported from the UK do not need to be assay tested and in many countries, like the USA, assay testing is not a legal requirement. Les Wood exports his Ferndown pipes to the USA and his Elwood pipes to Europe, mostly Germany - so official assay testing of the silver is not required. Similarly, if he fits a silver band, the cost of sending an item like this off for testing and hallmarking would eat out a large part of his profit. However, if the item is then being sold in the UK like the mysterious Dunhill Astley pipes with LJS silver bands, then it is the reponsibility of the seller to have the silver assay tested and hallmarked, which Ezrati is clearly not doing.
This raises another question. Ezrati is keen to hail many of the pipes as being made by the Dunhill company and fitted with factory-fitted Les Wood silver bands stamped LJS - linking the fact that Les was silversmith at the Dunhill factory. However, show me a Dunhill pipe anywhere in the world with a factory fitted band that is stamped LJS. They don't exist. Dunhill were perfectly aware of their legal obligations in this respect and all their factory fitted silver bands are stamped AD and officially assay tested and hallmarked as required of a manufacturer and retailer in the UK. It seems quite clear that these bands were not factory fitted, but were an after market addition to lend kudos to the pipe on offer, as being an "official" Dunhill product. In fact one of the pipes he was claiming had a Dunhill factory fitted silver band stamped LJS was covering half of the nomenclature on the shank of the pipe! Even more worrying is
THIS PIPE which he claims to be a Dunhill but the silver is only stamped SILVER 925. A 925 stamp is not even a recognised mark in the UK so there is no way Dunhill would send out such items. Making these claims, and selling silver clad pipes not properly assay tested and hallmarked are both breaches of Trading Standards regulations. Even claiming a pipe is from a particular year without documentary evidence to back it up is a breach of the regulations, whether done knowingly or not.
However, Trading Standards are only likely to take action on receiving a complaint or notification from a consumer - and not from another trader.
Other anomolies are the 9mm filter pipes.
This one is a "Dunhill from 1986" yet has a 9mm filter fitting. I was not aware of Dunhill making 9mm filter pipes in the 1980's, especially for a UK retailer! Likewise,
this very Danish looking Bill Taylor "Ashton" from 1985 is also fitted with a 9mm filter. Something a UK pipe maker would not do as a matter of course for a UK retailer. 9mm filter pipes are normally bound for and retrieved from the German market.
These are just a few goings on that I have uncovered today. I am sure as time goes on, more examples like that discovered on the German forum linking pipe purchase to pipe sale will emerge. This practice exceeds the boundaries of Trading Standards and constitutes fraud. A matter which would be investigated by the Police and dealt with through the courts and criminal justice system.
If anyone has any further suspicions or evidence of wrong doing, please make the community aware of it or even send me a PM. Hopefully together we can clear up this mess.
