Jost's in Saint Louis (anyone have any actual memories of this place?)

[huntertrw]

mcitinner1:
Did you purchase yours from the same eBay estate seller as trailboss and me? If so, then I'll be eager to know how yours smoke as well.

 

[mcitinner1]

Yes Hunter, same seller, I offered $50 for the 3 pipes shipped and it was accepted. I'm excited to see them. It would be great if they could be dated but that doesn't look possible any closer than a decade maybe. The pipes are a St Louis connection for me.
tinner

 

[mcitinner1]

St Louis just won their NLDS game 4 and ended the Dodger's season. :clap:
tinner

 

[fnord]

Tinner:
Go Cards!
Grew up in Joplin and that town has always been a Redbird stronghold.
Please keep this thread going. I've got three Jost's burners: two of the longest damned Canadians I have in my collection and a little bulldog - all with the Comoy's rounded Made in England stamp. They're all great smokers but it looks like you cats might be getting some Harvey Raspberry handmades and it doesn't get much better than that.
Monty, Hunter, Trailboss, would you mind letting me know what you receive? I would be grateful, guys.
Fnord

 

[lucky695]

john Dengler shop down in an old farm house right on the Missouri River in Old St. Charles. Really nice people who run it... and knowledgable, some great home blends in there. My Gram is 91 and ran a Cigar shop near Famous Barr back in the 50s, I'll have to ask her about Jost Pipe shop.

 

[mcitinner1]

I would like to hear about any tobacco shops in the St Louis area. I have lots of books about historic St Louis but almost nothing in them about tobacco shops. Kind of odd.

 

[huntertrw]

I received my billiard this afternoon in the mail. It appears to be unsmoked, but also appears to have been dip-stained. Was this common with Jost pipes?

 

[teufelhund]

St. Louis native as well; Go Cards! I have a few of these pipes; I tend to find them in the antique malls and flea markets which seem to be really popular around the area. While I am too young to have been to the actual store I have managed to collect and restore a few I deem worthy. I almost think I enjoy the old advertisement and tobacco labels from Jost's more. I just have to figure out a way to display them. I know my grandfather shopped there and wish I could have too. Not too many worthwhile tobacconists in the area.

 

[mcitinner1]

Good to meet you Teufelhund. I plan to get out to a few antique stores soon. Is your username a German thing? My last name is Schmitz.
Hunter are you going to smoke it that way? Probably wouldn't hurt (much). If mine come that way I might sand the inside of the bowl very lightly.

 

[huntertrw]

mcitinner1:
Heavens no! I sanded the inside of the bowl, and am now administering the salt-and-alcohol treatment as a precaution. Interestingly, there was also dye inside of the stem which leads me to think that someone attempted to "improve" this pipe! I'll be interested to know if yours were similarly stained.

 

[mcitinner1]

Me too, mine were shipped today.

 

[lucky695]

Tinner...

I went to school with some Schmitz in St. Louis at St. Monica's Catholic school in the 80s.

 

[fnord]

Tinner/Schmitz:
Our friend, Teufelhund, uses that tag because he was - actually still is and always will be, retired or not - a member of the United States Marine Corps.
When the Kaiser's men met our leathernecks for the first time during WWI they called them teufelhunden - devil dogs in English. (I'm a bit partial to jarheads these days. One of my twin sons will be graduating from the University of Kansas, 05/17/2015. Later that afternoon he'll be commissioned as a 2nd john in the USMC Reserve and will spend the next four years thanking Uncle Sam for his education.)
God bless and protect those fine young men and women.
Hunter, would you mind sharing the stampings on your new billiard? I'd love to know what you and the others ended up with. I think you're going to be more than pleased.
Fnord

 

[fnord]

By the way...
How about some before and after pix as this becomes a very specific Midwestern pipe thread?
Lucky, I can't wait to hear what your grandmother has to say about the Jost shop and, Teufelhund, you probably have the richest collection of Jost burners, next to the OP, Mattia76.
Got any pix you can share?
Fnord

 

[mcitinner1]

Lucky, St Monica isn't a school I'm familiar with.
"God bless and protect those fine young men and women."
Fnord thanks for the interpretation.
I need to remember pics too.
tinner

 

[huntertrw]

I am confused. The "Jost" pipe which I received was unsmoked as advertised, but was HEAVILY dip-stained a Cordovan/plum color. As noted above, there was even stain inside of the stem!
Using 190-proof Everclear grain alcohol I removed this stain only to find a pretty (and stable) walnut color beneath...and a putty fill (which the stain partially masked - I did not notice it until it was removed) on the right-hand side of the shank where it meets the bowl. Further, the band (which appears to be silver, but was not marked as such) has a stamping on the left-hand side which says "Premier" inside of a horizontally elongated four-sided diamond. The shank of the pipe is stamped "JOST" on the left-hand side. There is no other nomenclature.
The question now is what do I really have? A Jost "bucket" pipe? A forgery? Your thoughts, Forum members?

 

[fnord]

Hunter:
I truly doubt your burner is a forgery but the possibilities at this point hereon are endless. It could be a basket pipe, or a second or an order fill from a damned good stateside buyer. (Their cross state competitor in Kansas City was Fred Diebel's and Diebel's was as joined at the hip to GBD as Jost was to Comoy's.)
Then again, it could be a blank. I have a Diebel's stamped Dublin that is one of my best burners. There are no flaws visible to the eye - aside from unattractive graining - and Fred's son, Kurt, ID'ed the pipe as a GBD blank which they sold by the thousands.
If you have access to any Comoy's ephemera I'd try to match the shape of your billiard in a catalog.
It's also very possible that Jost did their best catering to every market level of customer and purchased blanks from the mom and pop shops in St, Claude, or wherever, to meet various price points. More than likely, we'll never know the origin.
Raspberry marked his pipes as were the majority of the Comoy's Jost purchased. Maybe yours fell through the cracks?
The big question is, how does it smoke?
Fnord

 

[mcitinner1]

Well Hunter they arrived today and everything you said about the stain is the same here. I also had forgotten I told myself to never bid on another pipe that the seller didn't give dimensions and weight of. These pipes IMO should be called a 'ladies' size pipe. The total height of the bowls is 1 5/16" to 1 3/8" and they are feather weights. The flat end of the stems won't let a regular pipe cleaner pass thru. I got a lot of reddish stain out of them too.
tinner, Stan

 

[huntertrw]

mcitinner1:
I could see the unsmoked pipe which I purchased possibly being dip-stained (but certainly not to the HEAVY degree that it actually was), but previously-smoked ones, too? And apparently after the fact? Methinks there might be mischief afoot here! I'm eager to hear what trailboss has to say about his.

 

[huntertrw]

trailboss:
If the pipes which you and mcitinner1 purchased were all previously smoked, and yet had been dip-stained AFTER the fact (as evidenced by the presence of stain inside of the stems), then it would appear that mischief (on the part of someone at some time) is, indeed, afoot.