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Since I was a young child and caught the occasional whiffs of a pleasant aromatic pipe smoke filling the air, I became intrigued with being a pipe smoker as an adult and tasting that sweet smelling tobacco. Over time those thoughts drifted away until I became heavily involved in my cigar hobby, and the thoughts of taking up the pipe had returned. However, those weren't to serious as I didn't really know where to begin. As a fan of the Spaghetti Westerns ("A Fistful of Dollars," "For A Few Dollars More" and "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly") I became enamored with a smooth bent billiard meerschaum pipe just like the one Lee Van Cleef smoked in "For A Few Dollars More." As I got into the hobby of pipe smoking I searched all over the internet and ebay looking for a matching pipe. I did find some that were being sold for a pretty penny, and more than I could afford at the time. As time went on it became very hard to find the pipe I was looking for. I eventually stumbled across a nice half bent smooth billiard meerschaum from Sarkis Adana Turkey and snagged it at a very reasonable price. I dubbed it my Lee Van Cleef pipe even though it was not an identical match. More recently I came across a Strambach smooth bent billiard identical to that of Lee Van Cleef's, but didn't know much about the Strambach company. After doing some research, and speaking with a friend from the UK that is very knowledgeable about pipes he provided me with the bit of information I was looking for to finally pull the trigger. Well the pipe arrived today, and I must say I'm very pleased. The pipe is the identical shape to that of Lee Van Cleef's, and per my information his was also an Austrian meerschaum pipe made by the Andreas Bauer company that is now owned by Koncak Meerschaum which is based out of Turkey. So finally after about 5 years of looking I finally own a "Lee Van Cleef" Austrian meerschaum pipe. I will enjoy coloring this pipe, and I'm hoping that mine will overtime color as Lee's pipe did. So with all that said here are a few pics of my new pipe.
