Most Money Paid For A Pipe

[okiescout]

My wife said if you spend that much money on that pipe, I am leaving. Geeze.... sometimes I really miss that woman.

 

[vink]

I paid a bit more than $300 US for my Tinsky Christmas pipe, which is like 10 000$ CAD for me!

 

[jakegoodman]

$100 for a Aldo Velani.

 

[iamn8]

$19.99 + tax

 

[demetrakopoulos]

My most expensive pipes didn't cost me more than $100. I have a nice Radice, but I got it as an estate and it was 30% off of the estate price. I made off like a bandit on that one.
The sales tax here in Chicago is 10.25%, so on a $400 pipe, the tax I'd be paying towards it would be enough to buy a lower end Rossi.

 

[ericpierson]

Since it is possible that my wife could read this post, lets say $40. That will make her happy.

 

[easterntraveler]

$600 for my Ser Jacopo Picta Van Gogh Gem Series Smeraldo with Silver. Worked 2 days of overtime so I could buy it.

 

[perlasca]

Most I ever paid was $125.00 for a pipe made by Glenn Tinsky, the son of Mark Tinsky.
The most I'd ever pay? $100, plus or minus a few bucks.

 

[misterlowercase]

Most money I ever paid was $52,900 for an exquisite Fukushima Fish by world-renowned pipemaker, Mike Messer.
I had to take out a loan,

but hey

YOLO!
I would show you a picture,

but it's so beautiful that your eyeballs would fall right outta yer head.
::

 

[thesinistral]

My second pipe I ever bought, a Ser Jacopo Rusticated bent apple. It was about $225, i think. It's still one of my absolute favorite smokers.

 

[frozenchurchwarden]

I bought a Ferndown Root Silver Spigot Bulldog Churchwarden for $385 U.S. (about $430 CAD since the exchange rate wasn't quite so abysmal back then, the same thing today would cost an extra hundred Canadian Rupees).
I'm not sure if I regret it or not.

There's a few things I wouldn't have guessed I would care about so much (silver is a pain to maintain, and I re-drilled the stem), but it's still one of the pipes that's best suited to my tastes. The length, the shape, the army mount, the depth and width of the bowl (not too deep and decently wide).

I will say it's one of the only pipes that I currently have no thought of selling, that specific configuration is quite rare, but it was still a long journey to reach that point.

 

[lasttango]

I just paid $139 for a Bing pipe made by Boswell Pipes. That would be my most expensive pipe to date and would probably be my limit for now.

You got th Bing from Boswell's... It makes me feel better that one of "us" got that one. I wasn't able to spring on the site Thursday as I was at work... I definitely would have snagged that pipe. It's quite nice. Let us know how it smokes!

 

[sparrowhawk]

Captain, we gotta talk sometime...The most I can justify, ignoring the Downey custom, would be my 107 Peterson Irish Harp, which ran about $137. I like this pipe so much I got two extra ones for rotation.

 

[cigrmaster]

Pat, that is a gorgeous Rad, I bet it smokes awesome.
Actually the most I have paid for any pipe is 450.00. It is a Rad Davis Billiard. It was a commission with Rad, and he said he only got around 4-5 blocks a year that could take this deep of a blast.

 

[misterlowercase]

Cigrmaster,

by totally sick I mean friggin' badass !
I now urge you to help me find a Rad Davis blasted squat tomato,

I know you have leads on such stuff you crafty bastard,

seriously,

my collection is incomplete without a Rad,

and I sadly missed the window,

I love his squat tomatos and if you can get one for me

I'd gladly pay a "finder's fee" to you! :P
Offtopically,

the word sick used as slang has an interesting history,

here are some etymologists discussing it...

How did 'sick' come to mean 'awesome' or 'really good / cool' in modern U.S. slang? I'm interested in origins and possibly regional patterns, if applicable.
This usage reminds me of the use of 'bad' to mean 'totally awesome' in the 80s. It would be interesting to know how that came about as well, and if the pattern is related...
+
The OED says this slang is now especially used for skateboarding and surfing, and the first quotation is from a 1983 UNC-CH Campus Slang by the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill:
Sick, unbelievably good: The Fleetwood Mac concert was sick.
Partridge notes bad is much older, and the OED gives the source as George Ade's story of a black shoeshine boy, Pink Marsh : a story of the streets and town (1897):
She sutny fix up a pohk chop 'at's bad to eat.
It says its originally US slang and means something good or excellent, especially stylish or attractive. The later quotations trace its use through black and jazz slang (1928, 1955, 1959, 1971 and 1989) until more 'mainstream' use is noted in a US newspaper in 1995 and a UK book in 2006.
+
I think it was originally a skateboarding slang to express "shock and awe" after seeing something cool. I'm hazarding a guess that it was first used to describe crashes. The only corroboration I can find is from About.com and a Straight Dope forum post. Quoting the latter:
I first heard the word "sick" being used as slang on the 1987 skateboarding video put out by Powell and Peralta entitled "The Search for Animal Chin." A skater did some cool trick or whatever, and a hardcore skateboarder onlooker said, "that's sick". We thought it was hilarious, and I have heard it used ever since, though mainly among skaters/surfers/snowboarders/druggies and the like.
It is my observation that the word not so much means "cool", but carries a connotation more extreme than just that. It is used to describe something that is unbelievable, unprecedented, or just plain mind-blowing.
+
I think the pattern is related, though I'm unable to substantiate that. Still, I've observed it enough: some adjective is used informally to mean something different than it typically means (maybe even the opposite of what it usually means) – a cool motorcycle, a nasty curveball, a rad(ical) dress, a wicked dance move, a gnarly book, an epic sunset, a sick jump, a bad pizza, etc. Somehow, the word sticks for awhile, probably because it sounds innovative. Yet as the popularity of the word swells, its freshness wanes, and it becomes ripe to be displaced by something new.
+
This question ought to be reopened, because the current answers are basically wrong. Whether or not other usage in youth culture pre-dates it, sick became slang for pretty much the opposite of what it traditionally means in the late '90s in South London, with predominantly black kids into the 'grime' music scene, which in turn spawned the 'dubstep' music scene. Dubstep has since become popular in the USA, and the American kids that use this word tend to be into dubstep, which originally comes from South London. When I was a kid in the '80s, 'wicked' developed in very much the same way.

Another note,

Radical Rick was a totally awesome comic character that I loved from the 80's who was published in BMX Plus magazine,

I was a wicked sick BMX'er back then!

 

[cigrmaster]

mlc, thanks for the nice comment. I will keep my eyes open for you, but a certain shape could be difficult. Are there others shapes you could live with?

 

[misterlowercase]

Are there others shapes you could live with?

A straight billiard with that awesome reddish mahagony stain he used would be a no-brainer,

or any pipe that is on the smaller side weighing less than 45 grams,

and it must be blasted.
But hey,

don't try to gyp me already, :x

I really want one of his squat tomatos!
::

 

[pruss]

Harris, thanks for the nice words. That pipe is a wonderful smoker, even though it is huge. Cube cut flake well packed and smoking out of the wind, that's at least a three hour bowl.
MLC - I'll keep my eyes open for you. Your white whale is around, I'm certain.
-- Pat

 

[misterlowercase]

MLC - I'll keep my eyes open for you. Your white whale is around, I'm certain.

Cool beans,

thanks mate!
I'm glad I mentioned this here.

:!:
I really really miss Rad's gallery at his old site,

I would browse for ages looking at all his shape variations,

his squats always greatly appealed to me.
I consider Rad Davis to be the pre-eminent master of American pipemaking,

bar none.
He has no peer.

::

 

[freakiefrog]

$450.00 +/- for my Davorin Denovic Morta blowfish last year.