Do we have too many pipes?

[jon11]

I have too many. I said I was going to stop at 100 briars but have 107 and 108 on the way in the mail.

 

[nitemair13]

I don't think you can have too many. As long as you enjoy them. My pipe rack holds 12 and I use those regularly. Plus a few that will sit on there on. My first pipe gets little use as I was not well educated in pipe maintenance and it has some wear and tear already so I retired it and keep 8t for sentimental reasons.
I'd like to acquire a few more churchwardens as I seem to enjoy the longer stems more. Primarily Nordings.

 

[hoosierpipeguy]

Hunting pipes is definitely fun, but feeling a pressure to have enough rested pipes to make every smoke worthwhile is not, for me at least.

You've clearly answered your own question as the only person you need to satisfy with your pipe smoking is you.

 

[mikethompson]

Do I have enough pipes? Well at the rate I can smoke, a cob would last me the rest of my life. A 50g tin lasts me the year. So strictly speaking, functionally speaking, I have enough smoking accoutrements.
But I just love the history of it all. I love looking at my hardwood cob my girlfriend now wife bought me 15 years ago, my first 'real' pipe, a Straumbach Meerschaum, my birth year Brigham, my 1955 Dunhill, and they all tell me a story. They are more than smoking apparatus for me, each one tells a story and I love stories.

 

[mahew]

My wife asks me occasionally, “How many pipes do you need?” Which I always reply, “Just one more!”
I am not certain how many pipes ago that started.

 

[alexnc]

I'm really lucky. My wife thinks it's OK, and supports that I should be able to collect something I like. One of the first ones was a Sav 320 she gave me. That said, I realize I do have too many. 26 and 3 I don't count (cobs... cobbits and a C Gent with forever stems no less). Pretty excessive considering I usually only smoke 3 days a week. I've traded and sold that many more probably. I tried restoring and reselling on ebay to curb the PAD. That worked to some extent, but I didn't like parting with some of the ones I refinished. And of course no one was willing to pay anything that even approached the time I had in them. One of the last ones was an Ardor I still wish I had not sold. So it didn't work.

 

[wyfbane]

^I lament almost every pipe I have sold. I had two unsmoked Nording hunting pipes in the tubes and gave a friend a deal. We are no longer friends and I miss the pipes more than the friendship. Lol
I have 'stopped buying pipes to focus on tobacco' and still have two inbound in the mail. It's a disease!!

 

[mountainman]

Every time I buy a pipe, there is an older one that stops getting used. I find a smaller rotation works for me since I don’t smoke more than one bowl a day on average. So I focus on having a small rotation of great smokers, typically made from North American or danish carvers.

 

[mso489]

How do you know when you have too many pipes? Simple. When you get to the place where you don't want to count them to know exactly how many you have. Don't make excuses if you've reached that point. Not counting the cobs. Dismissing some as only for resale. If you won't count them, you have too many.

 

[alexnc]

Oh I admit I have too many! So I'll count the cobs - 29 it is! The ebay restore & resell was to learn how to do it, and I got pretty good at it very quickly. It was also a scheme to pay for the hobby and become engrossed in it without ending up with an enormity of them. I did enjoy it and took a lot of pride in my work, and it did offset the expenditure to some degree. But it was disheartening to sell some really beautiful work to only net $10 or $15 (occasionally $40 or $50 - those felt good). They were purchased with the intention of resale.

 

[jpmcwjr]

Since cake flavors the smoke and buffers against wet smoking from green wood....

If you smoke similar blends in a given pipe, little to no additional flavor would be noticeable from the cake. And if the pipe is under-cured, yes, it'll be like green wood, and smoke nasty and wet. But most pipes aren't like that- even low end pipes tend to be made from seasoned or cured briar.
Overall, good points, though.