Bertram Grade 40 Bulldog

[Briar Lee]

Every day I swear I’ve met my quota of Bertram pipes and then my favorite pipe peddler on eBay, Pipe Dreams 3, comes along and dangles a 40 Grade Bertram Bulldog in front of me for $40, plus another $8 shipping and taxes to the dad blasted gubbermint.

If my kids can’t get forty dollars back when I’m in Plum Grove Cemetery for this thing they need to keep my stuff and not try selling it.

A Bertram pipe in good condition is the best value in used pipes, bar none.

Buy the stem, folks. It’s the best indicator of how much a pipe was used and if it was loved.




Tomorrow I’m going to quit!

I swear I will!

Let me practice a little twang here before I turn in for the evening.

This Bertram 40 cost $40 when Porter Wagoner and the Wagonmasters sang about nickel sacks of candy.

Daddy and the Wine

 

[Meat]

I came very close to buying that Bertram. I have a few and they are wonderful pipes in my opinion. Never a disappointing or subpar smoke. I hope you enjoy your new pipe!

 

[Ryan]

I kept looking at this one, particularly as the price kept dropping. I almost pulled the trigger but decided it was too much like the Bertram I already have. Enjoy!

 

[Briar Lee]

People today complain about inflation but, since the total disaster of deflation in the early to middle thirties there has always been creeping inflation in the USA, and for that matter the entire world, even when we were on a gold standard.

The worst year of inflation in the modern era in the USA was 1920, 20 per cent in one year, on a full gold standard.

So let’s say today, although Dunhill can’t source Algerian briar, they certainly can source very fine old straight grain briar and make a smooth standard shape pipe.

Such as this one, $3,800

https://www.smokingpipes.com/pipes/new/dunhill/moreinfo.cfm?product_id=595011

How much did a Bertram 40 cost when a chauffeur driven Cadillac or Lincoln let out a woman at Bertram’s whose husband was say, a United States Senator with a birthday coming up?

It twar’nt never no cheap bauble, as my old grandmother would say.

Likely 40 dollars when the same grade Dunhill cost less.

Bertram sold Dunhill’s for those wishing something less expensive.

Look at that straight grain.

 

[telescopes]

I passed as well. I was concerned with the burn marks and what looked to be some fine cracking on the rim.

 

[Briar Lee]

I passed as well. I was concerned with the burn marks and what looked to be some fine cracking on the rim.

Like the vast majority of dead man’s pipes I get the dead man didn’t smoke it all the way down.



A pocketknife will scrape the small amount of cake away and Murphy’s Oil Soap will clean up the rim and lighten it several shades all over.

If that’s a little crack on the rim it won’t bother me.

Let’s see how it compares with a Four Star 5 point gold star inlaid era Lee bulldog.

 

[towhee89]

Every day I swear I’ve met my quota of Bertram pipes and then my favorite pipe peddler on eBay, Pipe Dreams 3, comes along and dangles a 40 Grade Bertram Bulldog in front of me for $40, plus another $8 shipping and taxes to the dad blasted gubbermint.

If my kids can’t get forty dollars back when I’m in Plum Grove Cemetery for this thing they need to keep my stuff and not try selling it.

A Bertram pipe in good condition is the best value in used pipes, bar none.

Buy the stem, folks. It’s the best indicator of how much a pipe was used and if it was loved.

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Tomorrow I’m going to quit!

I swear I will!

Let me practice a little twang here before I turn in for the evening.

This Bertram 40 cost $40 when Porter Wagoner and the Wagonmasters sang about nickel sacks of candy.

Daddy and the Wine

Nice pickup. I too buy from Pipe Dreams, and am waiting on 3 Sparta NC Grabow made pipes to arrive

The other day I picked up this Bertram for $20 + shipping. Couldn't resist. Very standard but I know it'll smoke beautifully. The seller didn't include a photo of the stampings, so one wonders which number will be on it....


The further I go into collecting the more I love the squat bullmoose / bullcap shapes as well as oddball Boer and Lyon pipes, but I just can't say no to a Bertram for that price!
But tomorrow I'm going to quit as well

 

[Briar Lee]

The Bertram 1950 catalog brags they’d made pipes for three generations.

And they made $1.50 pipes in 1950.

Just ten years later, there’s just no way their $1.50 grade could sell for $1.50. It had to have been more.

In 1960 Carl Weber was writing in his book a perfect straight grain cost $100. In the 1950 Bertram catalog a perfect straight grain, the top grade sold mail order, was $25.

I’m convinced is somehow Bertram had survived like Dunhill, today the lowest grade Bertram might be a 500.