I’ve seen a few other NO STARS lately and have wondered about this. My thouyare that these are third generation Lees and the stars have been polished off - they are either painted on or lightly presses on - third generation lacked the physical stars. Or, these are indeed replacement stems. The pipe also looks a bit over reamed. Other than that, it is a nice lo piece. In the information section, the seller stated not to use alcohol to remove the finish. Better not tell our friend.
I own over a hundred of those, and that one is a first run stamped star.
One day sometime in the fifties, at the peak height of Lee quality, the company quit inlaying jeweler’s gold five pointed stars, and instead stamped the stars and filled them with gold foil.
Such a pipe often is absolutely gorgeous, as good as a Lee got, just with those K Mart grade stamped stars.
That one has been professionally polished. A factory Lee of that era was almost matte, a high dollar, beautful thing that glowed instead of shone. You can use Everclear without fear on factory finish Lees and they love olive oil, or better, grapeseed oil.
The stars might be visible as ghosts if you examine it close.
That’s a large saddle stemmed apple. Lees were like Kaywoodies in most were machine fraised then hand finished.
If you could see the stars there might only be two.
Sometime in the five pointed star era production Lee raised prices to five dollars a star, I read somewhere.
The 5 pointed star Two Stars have better grain and the Three Stars are just fantastic. When the stamped stars came out the quality doesn’t seem to decline until the hidden screw stem was abandoned in favor of a Briarlee style disc mortise.
Then at the end a Lee was push stem with a nylon stem, and lightly varnished. They always smoked well, until the last.
Query.
I can’t imagine Lee selling custom order Four Stars and Five Stars with stamped stars. I’ve never seen one above three star grade.
Did Four and Five Star grades keep inlaid gold stars? Did Lee give up on high grades?
A 7 point Three Star Saddle Stem Apple
