Shaintiques is correct about the date. It is usually refered to as a CITIs certificate. The primary problem is transporting it across international borders. If you want to do that, you have to show some kind of documentation that it was possessed by you or a previous owner before 1989. There are also some hinky rules about transporting across state lines in the US, but I have never heard of them being enforced, and every state does it differently.
If indeed it is real ivory, I would not smoke it, period. Two basic reasons - both of which have to do with heat. First is, do you remember the smell of a visit to a dentist twenty years ago when the dentist was really grinding away? That is what it would smell like to smoke. Ivory is a tooth. It is made out of the same stuff as the ones you are/were equipped with.
Second, ivory is prone to cracking. Heat is one of the fastest ways to cause it to happen. I am kind of surprised that you found a full-sized pipe made of the stuff. It doesn't seem very practical. I know that very small ones, for smoking various substances, can be found in the orient, but becase they are designed to snoke very small quantities, they never heat up too much. I don't know what the odds are, but I bet they are better than 50% that an ivory pipe with a typically sized tobacco chamber would crack if used.
anthony
