Good decision to let it live, imo. If it was your first pipe, there should be a place for it for purely sentimental reasons. Someday many years from now you'll be glad you hung on to it.
Sometimes junk is junk and getting rid of it is the best thing you can do for it and for you. I had a haojue "pipe" for a little while, and throwing that piece of garbage in the trash can was worth almost as much as I paid for it in the first place.
I have my first pipe and it ain't so good. I struggle with letting it go. I keep it around for anyone that may want to give a pipe a try. It's briar but cheap I use to think the world of it and now she sits in a junk closet.
Isn't it funny how our first pipes once gave us so much pleasure, but now sit neglected.
I have a very pretty Kaywoodie prince in excellent shape which used to please me very much to smoke. I eventually realized what a wet smoke she gives.
Maybe we could hear from others. What was your first pipe? Does it still see any service?
Mine was an estate pipe. It was a plain billiard and the only readable mark on it was "Made in England". It actually has a pretty grain and smokes well, though. I still smoke it on occasion.
I still have my first one, a Canadian from a small St. Louis shop called Jost's. I bought it new around '82 or '83. Still smokes great and is part of my regular rotation. ::
My first pipe is still one of my best smokers. Whenever its turn in the rotation comes around it is like a visit from an old friend whom I haven't seen in a long time.
My first was a horrendous medico brylon pipe... I smoked it once and shoved it in the back corner of a drawer and effectively forgot about it. I still smoke my first "real" pipe regularly