House pipes are detective stories for pipe smokers, figuring out who made them. Some are somewhat easy to identify, others almost impossible. My recent mystery is a gift estate pipe, a freehand stamped "Thompson" and 'West Germany". I am reasonably sure that the Thompson is Thomson Cigar, so I wrote them, but no response. This was probably too long ago, and all of those who might remember are retired or otherwise gone. To further abolish the trail, I removed the unusual P-lip looking stem and replaced it with with a tortoise shell acrylic similarly bent stem with a fishtail bit, so that evidence is gone. The old stem was oxidizing after rigorous polishing to a shine and one smoke. My first pipe was a Tinder Box St. Ives, which I am convinced is French, probably Chacom, with a little advice from Tinder Box headquarters; they apparently still have an in-house historian who has some clues about the past. If I were the King of Pipes, I would require all pipe makers and pipe tobacco blenders keep retirees on some sort of retainer, paid on a modest per-letter basis, to answer historical questions. Or if that is beyond hope, perhaps retirees could be appointed historians emeritus and asked to answer such inquiries, as an honorific.