After the war Robert Marx spent over $200,000 (3.2 million present day) a year advertising Mello, Benchmade, Jumbo, Super Grain, and (sometimes) 400 series pipes.
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The average drug store price of a pipe in 1946 was about a dollar.
There never was any Marxman tobacco when Marx was in charge, I think is a safe assumption.
$2.50 a pound was outrageous. In 1954 that would be $30 a pound in our money. And the customer didn’t even get a description.
Other blends maxed out at about half that price.
There are no Benchmade or Jumbo or 400 series pipes in the catalog. Everything except the $5 figurals are machine made in a slew of shapes. The customer cannot chose a $5, $7.50, $10, or $15 size.
Unless those are on some missing pages at the end, which is strange. Marx was built on Benchmades and Jumbos, the more money the bigger. In my catalogs they were advertised near the front. The Dunsboros and Mellos and Select Grains were cheaper (relatively) pipes that were stained.
Only the $10 Deluxe, obviously machine made in dozens of shapes, is listed as “virgin”. All previous $5 and up Marxman pipes were unstained. They were ultra luxury products.
That’s a Mastercraft era catalog, I’ll bet.
Maybe the last one.
Somebody had to sell off the old stocks of briar and shut off the lights forever, you know?
Eventually they read Made in France and Algerian Briar.
Those must have been “transitional” Marxman pipes, made of Pre 54 briar in New York, but not full Monte Robert Marx era Marxman pipes.
At least one of Marx’s carvers named Cowan started his own pipe company. He could have bought out the remaining stock of old briar.
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There was a sharp and brief recession in 1953-4 that corresponded with the sale to Mastercraft and the start of the Algerian War of Indepence.
en.m.wikipedia.org
Mastercraft likely gave a pink slip to everybody earning decent money.
