I repeat…. There are many beautiful Marxman pipes sold without fills and with beautiful lines in very traditional shapes.
@Briar Lee , you just have a hankering for those ugly ole broads no one wants to smoke.
My concern is not for me, who was born and will die privileged beyond any measure.
If a new pipe cost a thousand dollars, and I really wanted one more than I liked having a thousand dollars I’d have all the pipes I could smoke, not buckets full without counting, but more than enough.
This is a $10 pipe, last month. It was black as a stove and caked almost solid.
What I’ve discovered thanks to this thread is that every Marxman ever made in New York City, even this $5 Super Briar that likely was made, considering it‘s several gouges and carvings while Spitfires and Messerschmitts dueled over the Tower of Big Ben, were the finest smokers the world will ever know.
It wasn’t the brand, nor that the briar came from Algeria that make a Marxman today the best bargain a pipe smoker can possibly find.
Marx, or somebody for him, knew how to grade, buy, and use the finest briar to smoke in the world.
That all ended when Marx sold out.
But a poor boy today could spend pocket change and buy a pipe that will at least equal and might surpass the most expensive new pipes today, to smoke and not to admire.
You have to be a confirmed pipe smoker to know the difference.
But Marx made pipes are every one, dynamite good smokers.
Every cheap, browned as a dog turd old Marxman pipe I bring back with steel wool and grapeseed oil and a sharp pocketknife will startle and please the next owner when they light it up.
And I get to smoke them during my time.
I may yet find one so caked up, so very well used, that simply scraping out the cake and cleaning them up can not back the full flower of how a fresh one smoked.
If so I’ll use it as a decorator and conversation piece of how the very best of its kind doesn’t last forever, but a very, very long time.