MARXMAN Pipes, Anyone?
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I already boxed it up, but I may check anyway. 3 digit number.
I can't wait to get the Deluxe, it looked like it had super pretty grain.
Briar Lee ... Do you have any Marxmans not stamped with Marxman, but look like a Marxman and have the model and Imported Briar stamped with the crown over it? Did they make pipes without that stamp ever ?
I’ve decided that only early Marxman pipes used what’s probably a crown (or is it an outline of Algeria?) and about WW2 no more crown.
Marx only numbered the 400s.
Benchmade and Jumbo both started at $5, but I have some with both Benchmade and Jumbo marked.
If it says Algerian briar it’s also going to say FRANCE.
Marx chased a dollar. There might be private label pipes he made.
Which is a long winded way of saying, “I don’t know the answer to your question.”
Briar Lee ... Do you have any Marxmans not stamped with Marxman, but look like a Marxman and have the model and Imported Briar stamped with the crown over it? Did they make pipes without that stamp ever ?
1. No
2. Yes, the crown (or outline of Algeria) stamp I think was discontinued by WW2.
3. Marx liked money. He may have made some pipes not stamped Marxman with the crown.
4. All this crown talk, reminds me of a song, but most of life does!
1. No
2. Yes, the crown (or outline of Algeria) stamp I think was discontinued by WW2.
3. Marx liked money. He may have made some pipes not stamped Marxman with the crown.
4. All this crown talk, reminds me of a song, but most of life does!
Van, you can do better.
scrap number three and four. Revise number two to state “I am not sure”.
What if, Robert Marx had spent just a wee little bit of extra labor to have every genuine Marxman stamped with a letter, and a number, like we presume he did every 400?
And he recorded each pipe in a ledger?
As things stand today, if a Marxman has a shape number it’s a quasi counterfeit French made continuation model.
What happened to the Crown (or Algeria) Stamp?
Before 1940 or thereabouts, all $3.50 and better pipes were made with geniune imported briar, not cheap domestic Mission Briar or North Carolina Laurel.
After 1940 of a pipe was made of IMPORTED BRIAR they let you know in BIG LETTERS.
If everyone thought like a native Ozarker born to a Christian Church mother from their cradle, these things would need no elaboration, explanation, or further illustration.
And he recorded each pipe in a ledger?
As things stand today, if a Marxman has a shape number it’s a quasi counterfeit French made continuation model.
What happened to the Crown (or Algeria) Stamp?
Before 1940 or thereabouts, all $3.50 and better pipes were made with geniune imported briar, not cheap domestic Mission Briar or North Carolina Laurel.
After 1940 of a pipe was made of IMPORTED BRIAR they let you know in BIG LETTERS.
If everyone thought like a native Ozarker born to a Christian Church mother from their cradle, these things would need no elaboration, explanation, or further illustration.
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What if, Robert Marx had spent just a wee little bit of extra labor to have every genuine Marxman stamped with a letter, and a number, like we presume he did every 400?
And he recorded each pipe in a ledger?
As things stand today, if a Marxman has a shape number it’s a quasi counterfeit French made continuation model.
What happened to the Crown (or Algeria) Stamp?
Before 1940 or thereabouts, all $3.50 and better pipes were made with geniune imported briar, not cheap domestic Mission Briar or North Carolina Laurel.
After 1940 of a pipe was made of IMPORTED BRIAR they let you know in BIG LETTERS.
If everyone thought like a native Ozarker born to a Christian Church mother from their cradle, these things would need no elaboration, explanation, or further illustration.
Which is a long winded way of saying, “I don’t know the answer to your question.”
@telescopesVan, you can do better.
scrap number three and four. Revise number two to state “I am not sure”.
The man's a lawyer !
Truth in advertising - I always enjoy Van’s posts. On the internet, my responses seem catty at times, I am sure, but I am laughing with him, not at him. I look forward to reading about his ruminations on good quality moonshine and bourbon.
And we get a laugh with you as well. We are all friends here after all! :D
A couple of years ago my renters who have a propane central furnace backup called me mad as a hornet.
They said they were tired of their propane company and wanted to switch suppliers and the new company demanded a full inspection of all propane appliances before they’d sell them propane.
I said that’s because my friend Dick and I made proper Christians out of those sons of birches.
Miss Charlotte taught all us little hillbillies of the dangers of propane in the seventh grade.
And she said the propane companies, know that the odor they put in propane fades in a dank, musty basement. It’s called ethyl mercaptan, and they only use it because it’s cheap!
Miss Charlotte said never trust the smell when the hot water heater goes out to warn you of a gas leak.
Call the propane company and have them inspect your appliance, before you light a match.
And bye and bye, a widow moved to farmhouse across the gravel road from my Mama, and she struggled to raise two boys, and my mother hired those boys to cut sprouts for minimum wage, and she fed them well, and when the job was done she paid them more than they had bargained for. As is our faith and custom.
And the widow came to Mama’s house to thank her for her kindness, and Mama inquired of her job, and she said she was a nurse’s aide.
And of course my mother gave her the full measure of the value of continuing education speech and said she ought to become a registered nurse, like her only child had became a lawyer!
The widow moved away closer to the University of Missouri Columbia and was struggling to work and raise two boys and attend nursing school when the hot water heater went out and she went down into the basement, lit a match——-BOOM!!!
The boys remembered, the lady who bargained with them for $3.25 and paid them $4.
The window, after several months in intensive care, recovered fully, and the two boys went on to college and they don’t cut any more sprouts a half mile South of Bug Tussle.
My friend Dick, was a stone cold atheist.
After he and I had collected all the limits of insurance coverage from the widow’s landlord who owned the water heater, the local propane company who did not check the hot water heater, and a satisfactory confidential settlement against a world wide company, Dick looked at me and said aren’t you afraid you’ll have to account for your riches at Judgement Day?
I just said all have fallen short of the glory, Dick, we are saved by His grace alone!.
Dick was one of the best Christians I ever met, and he never darkened a church house door.
Anybody with a good Christian mother who named their boy Richard, would never be surprised at a young boy named Robert L Marx, utilizing the cheapest briar on the market to become wealthy during the Great Depression and sell the 400, the world’s most expensive pipe in 1937, made of the world’s cheapest briar.
As is recorded in Pipepedia:
Marxman (Marxman Pipe Company) was created by Robert (Bob) L. Marx in 1934, when he was 29, and after he had worked for the William Demuth Company. His pipes were not outstanding because of the quality of their wood (probably Algerian), but Bob started making unique sculpted pieces, which brought the brand fame in the World of Hollywood cinema. Actors like Zachery Scott, Dennis Morgan, Jack Carson, Alan Hale, Joel McRae, and Ronald Reagan were some of the faces that appeared on the bowls.
Xxxx
When I called my mother and relayed my thanks for the referral, she requested a song, which of course I sang:
I am the world’s worst teacher, but only child of the best.
Guys, I wish I could show you my Deluxe, but it hasn't arrived yet. I ordered it the 3rd, they sent me the wrong pipe , I sent it back and they received it 5 days ago. The seller said they'd ship it ASAP, but here I wait and they aren't responding. I don't want to cancel it because I really wanted that Marxman. Ridiculous
As I sit here in my September years, I’m so grateful of my raising.
Alva Rains and my father were determined to find the remains of the last moonshine still in Spout Spring Hollow, and took me way off in the tall timber just over the Cedar County line.
I stuck to my Daddy like glue, and bye and bye we heard Alva whoop and holler, and we loped over a rise and there was Alva by a bunch of copper tubing. The still was long gone.
But there was a spring that spouted from the rocks (not the Spout Spring but a good one) and the ruts where the old road led back east towards Polk County.
Even at my tender age, I knew the fate of a shirtail relative of my father’s mother on her father’s side named JW Ray in 1937, from one sip of bad moonshine.
So I asked Alva, why did the Night Riders allow that awful whiskey still to remain in operation, when it might tempt a good Christian boy to drink some, and wind up like JW Ray?
Alva said the Nightriders made a rule.
The first run of each still had to be sampled first by Roy Bishop (the town drunk).
And if Roy wasn’t healthy afterwards , neither would the moonshiner be.
They said Roy got a few headaches, but he died peacefully of old age, later on.
And on our way back to my Daddy’s truck I had to promise not to tell Mama, I knew where that still was, and I never did.
Just proceed with caution. When I started reading all these threads I never thought these would become some of my absolute favorite pipes. But it happened. A lot of people say they are ugly at first glance and I thought the same thing but when you get them in person it's a whole different ball game on how they look feel and smoke
The American Indians all used something called pipestone.
www.nps.gov
You see paintings of Sir Walter Raleigh smoking a walnut bowl pipe, but eventually the Europeans found a certain kind of clay made the best pipes.
And a certain kind of mineral from Meerscahum mines in Turkey made even better ones.
In America we discovered a corn cob made a good pipe, especially the white corn grown along the Missouri River bottoms:
And after that nasty break in taste disappeared then the tumors on the roots of a heath shrub grown on the rim of the Mediterranean in poor soil, became the standard pipe we still smoke today, if we can afford one.
All Robert L Marx did to become wealthy was learn to select the best tasting briar on the market in 1934.
His pipes aren’t pretty, most color an oxblood brownish red, but try finding a better smoker.
$15 size Big Boy
That pipe was made at 27 West 24th Street NYC before 1954 of briar aged for years from a burl that might have sprouted before Napoleon was on Elba.
I think it cost about $25 dollars, I forget.
Pipestone National Monument (U.S. National Park Service)
For over 3,000 years, Indigenous people have quarried the red stone at this site to make pipes used in prayer and ceremony - a tradition that continues to this day and makes this site sacred to many people.
www.nps.gov
You see paintings of Sir Walter Raleigh smoking a walnut bowl pipe, but eventually the Europeans found a certain kind of clay made the best pipes.
And a certain kind of mineral from Meerscahum mines in Turkey made even better ones.
In America we discovered a corn cob made a good pipe, especially the white corn grown along the Missouri River bottoms:
And after that nasty break in taste disappeared then the tumors on the roots of a heath shrub grown on the rim of the Mediterranean in poor soil, became the standard pipe we still smoke today, if we can afford one.
All Robert L Marx did to become wealthy was learn to select the best tasting briar on the market in 1934.
His pipes aren’t pretty, most color an oxblood brownish red, but try finding a better smoker.
$15 size Big Boy
That pipe was made at 27 West 24th Street NYC before 1954 of briar aged for years from a burl that might have sprouted before Napoleon was on Elba.
I think it cost about $25 dollars, I forget.
Last edited:
The American Indians all used something called pipestone.
Pipestone National Monument (U.S. National Park Service)
For over 3,000 years, Indigenous people have quarried the red stone at this site to make pipes used in prayer and ceremony - a tradition that continues to this day and makes this site sacred to many people.
You see paintings of Sir Walter Raleigh smoking a walnut bowl pipe, but eventually the Europeans found a certain kind of clay made the best pipes.
And a certain kind of mineral from Meerscahum mines in Turkey made even better ones.
In America we discovered a corn cob made a good pipe, especially the white corn grown along the Missouri River bottoms:
And after that nasty break in taste disappeared then the tumors on the roots of a heath shrub grown on the rim of the Mediterranean in poor soil, became the standard pipe we still smoke today, if we can afford one.
All Robert L Marx did to become wealthy was learn to select the best tasting briar on the market in 1934.
His pipes aren’t pretty, most color an oxblood brownish red, but try finding a better smoker.
$15 size Big Boy
View attachment 372324
The Marxmans I want for this price are not popping up, maybe because you own them all. But I have been buying up copies that look just like this Big Boy. I too have a $30 limit for any Lee or Marxman, and too many sellers want too much for them.
