factory seconds have a minor flaw. out of the twenty or so pipes I've gotten this way only 1 or two were flawed in such a way that affected smoke-ability at all,and none of them were entirely unsmoke-able.(one did require a little redneck know how. Usually it's small divots around the top of the bowl(outside) or a finish color issue. Their probably not pipes your going to want to smoke with some dignitary or other, but they are great for tossing in the glove box or a pocket to have when the craving hits.
(section singing the praises)
Please scroll straight to the modified close tag if you don't feel like listening to me be a windbag...
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It's a beater pipe essentially, I carry mine in a pocket with a tamper and a lighter and a roll of baccy to work for smoke breaks. The main advantage is if I drop it in the parking lot and scratch it, Or I'm not paying attention and jam a pen in my pocket and get ink on it, or any number of horrible things that can happen to a pipe that is in your pocket as you go through daily life, I don't care. It's a 3 dollar pipe, not one of my $30-$120 briars. So I have no real money invested in it. It's not one of grandads old pipes(in your case substitute the gift from a girlfriend) that has some emotional weight tied to it. It's a corncob some wood and some plastic, and rather than taking the plastic out for a different pipe and throwing the rest away after the quality control guy said "well this isn't up to the aesthetic standards of MM" they said fine we'll sell em as cheapo pipes or give em away at the company picnic to our pipe smoking employees.
The other advantage to this bag is you don't know what style pipes your going to get from it. You'll probably wind up with a few each of bent stem and straight stem, a coupla legends(every review I've seen that mentions what pipes they got at least three legends the classic corncob pipe like frosty the snowman smokes) and a few of the larger or smaller or differently shaped cobs.
smoking through these will teach you even more about your likes and dislikes. I used to only have full bent mouth hangers. I started with the cobs and discovered that I also really enjoy partial bends and straight stemmed pipes. and to my surprise more the straight stems than the partial.
(/section singing the praises)
In short their ugly ussually perfectly smokable pipes that are cheap and can fill out your rotation until you get some more briars,or make decent beater pipes
