Rationalizing Spending A Lot On A Pipe?
- Thread starter geopiper
- Start date
Oh, why not say what it cost!?
And, was shipping free?
And, was shipping free?
Back in 1963 I spent $25 on my first "good" pipe. That was a lot of money to me back then. I still smoke that pipe all the time and have never regretted buying it. The sting of shelling out the money for a quality pipe will fade, but the enjoyment can last a lifetime.
@geopiper nice pipe!
All of the pipes I have, cost me under $100, except 2 and those were around $150. I could afford to spend more, I guess, if I HAD to.
I'm just glad my taste runs a little more on the inexpensive side as I have a habit of buying a lot of 'baccy
My wife just tells me often that she hopes I live long enough to smoke all the tobacco I have accumulated.
I hope I do too, because I do enjoy my stash of 'baccy!!
Mortgage Payment? That is more than all my pipes together....I think?!
As much as a "mortgage payment"? No. Never. I look at these sort of pipes the same way I do watches. Every so often I'll toy with the idea of buying a high end watch. But then I come back to the fact that I have a $125 Invicta that I quite simply prefer the look of over any Rolex I've ever seen. At a certain point, you're simply paying for a label over a function.
Yeah, but that point is like $10. You could list everything above that as a luxury to personal wants.
The point of the watch analogy is that there's an average price for a quality item and there's a luxury price for an item of similar quality. I expect a decent watch to cost me $100. Can I find one for $10? Probably. But I don't expect the $10 version will be of a quality and a style that I will find appealing. The same holds true of pipes. If you use Savinellis and Petersons as the median pipe and consider their median price is around $110, it creates a baseline for cost and expectation. A $4,000 mortgage payment is nearly 40x. Am I getting 40x the quality for a $4,000 pipe? Not even close. Just my $0.02.
But you are making $110 your arbitrary median price. There are 55 pipes on smoking pipes right now under $20, 13 of those under $10. All of them will burn tobacco just fine and I'm not sure I'd argue a Savinelli is going to give me 11x the quality experience either.
So that's really my point that $10 is really the baseline for function and everything else is a luxury to personal preference. Whether it's your jump from $10 to $100 or $100 to $1,000.
If we're only concerned with functionality, $10.00 is all any of us need. What that doesn't take into account are the intangibles: pleasing aesthetics, rarity, association of memory to a relative or loved one—things that are priceless.
I can read a five dollar paperback by my favourite author. The words are the same as the author's own copy with his handwritten notes in it, but the latter means more to me and I enjoy it exponentially.
I love a signed book from an author I worked with. Such preferences and luxuries are indeed priceless.
Affordability is always relative to your earnings.
That is why OP used a very good metric - Monthly mortgage payment. While monthly housing payments in absolute terms will wildly differ, for most it is typically 15% - 30% of gross income.
So what geopiper asked was - Can I afford a pipe which is 15% - 30% of my gross monthly income?
The answer from the forum was “Yes, as long as the rest of your finances are in control”
That is why OP used a very good metric - Monthly mortgage payment. While monthly housing payments in absolute terms will wildly differ, for most it is typically 15% - 30% of gross income.
So what geopiper asked was - Can I afford a pipe which is 15% - 30% of my gross monthly income?
The answer from the forum was “Yes, as long as the rest of your finances are in control”
It's not arbitrary at all. If you were to go on SmokingPipes.com and filter on price, you'd see that the range between $100-$200 is the fat part of the bell curve.
Looks like a Jess pipe. Nice looking pipe! Enjoy it i the best of health!
My guess was also a Jess. But I really don’t have the skills as much as I would like to have, to guess the maker, so I had remained silent so far.