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Briar Lee

Lifer
Sep 4, 2021
4,964
14,287
Humansville Missouri
My guess is it is a wrong box thing but no matter what it isn’t a Marxman. Why even pretend?

For only a few days I’ll pretend this is a true description:

BIG MARXMAN JUMBO 'DOODLER STYLE' ESTATE PIPE WITH BOX AND PAPERS - A Big Pipe​


Very Light Stem Wear - Very Light Scorching on Rim - Box is Worn

Please view all photos in detail for condition of the actual item you will receive

SOLD AS-IS - NO RETURNS

 

telescopes

Pipe Dreamer and Star Gazer
Apparently, there once was a time when drilling holes into the bowl was a thing. However, even those pipes had at least a purposeful look. This one was clearly rom the mind of someone with issues. And it was clearly not a Marxman. I have seen pipes on Ebay before that are sold as one thing but clearly are not - even though the box says otherwise. In this case, the Box says Jumbo. Not Marxman. A Marxman pamphlet is there, but what does that mean? And the pipe has no clear stamping. I didn't think it possible that $46 could be foolishly spent, but now I know this might be the case. LOL. @Briar Lee - I am counting on you to extoll the truly smoking quality of this thing. I am counting on it.
 

Briar Lee

Lifer
Sep 4, 2021
4,964
14,287
Humansville Missouri
Apparently, there once was a time when drilling holes into the bowl was a thing. However, even those pipes had at least a purposeful look. This one was clearly rom the mind of someone with issues. And it was clearly not a Marxman. I have seen pipes on Ebay before that are sold as one thing but clearly are not - even though the box says otherwise. In this case, the Box says Jumbo. Not Marxman. A Marxman pamphlet is there, but what does that mean? And the pipe has no clear stamping. I didn't think it possible that $46 could be foolishly spent, but now I know this might be the case. LOL. @Briar Lee - I am counting on you to extoll the truly smoking quality of this thing. I am counting on it.

The scarce $15 size was listed among the Jumbo line in my catalog, which is NOT the one with the Doodler, and the catalog is found in a worn box which it lays perfectly flat, and the box is large enough to hold an eight inch pipe, with a 2 1/2” tall bowl. Look at how that pipe has torn the box where it fits on the end. It barely fits.

A $15 Marx pipe shipped in that box, and I’d give $15 for that and the catalog.


That saddle stem looks like a “Big Boy” stem.

The holes and that electro pen rustication do NOT look Marxy.

The photos are all awful, obviously flash was used. The rustication may look better in natural light. My bet is that it was tooled by somebody afraid to carve or gouge that soft briar.

The almost washed out lines on the shank read something.

My 125 gram 400 that looks like a door knocker fits in the traditional, common red Marxman box.


That pipe has about a 2 1/2” tall bowl with a one inch hole.

There are an average of 12 flakes to the ounce of PS LNF and my biggest pipes hold 4 or 5 flakes, folded and twisted. That should hold six, maybe seven.

I own two ugly 1987 Robert L Marx Freehand 50th Anniversiary specials.

This one rhymes with those two.

Bob Marx was a horrible craftsman himself, in 1987.

So bad I wonder how he could have fit the stem to that Doodler copy from the early fifties.

A pipe that large was a novelty when it was made freehand by somebody who knew how to shape a fit a large saddle bit stem, with two steps on it.

The holes were obviously a copy of a Tracy Mincer Doodler. The theory was they acted as heat radiators. I think that dates it after 1950, unless Mincer copied holes he saw on other pipes.

Whatever that is and whoever made it, that has to be the largest finished Algerian briar pipe I’ve ever seen. It ought to be powder soft, and should color all over to reddish brown in a jiffy, after whatever finish is on it is removed.
 
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Briar Lee

Lifer
Sep 4, 2021
4,964
14,287
Humansville Missouri
I guess every once in a while even a good lawyer gets an unwinnable case. Welcome to the bar good sir. The jury is not out on this one. It's a bench decision by the judge.

The forensics aren’t in yet.

There’s a boatload of circumstantial and hearsay evidence indicting Robert L Marx for making the world’s ugliest pipe.

The only hope Marx has is an after the sale switch.

The letters will tell the tale.:)
 

Briar Lee

Lifer
Sep 4, 2021
4,964
14,287
Humansville Missouri
The normal red Marxman box was 2 inches wide, one and a half inches tall (but would expand upwards) and seven inches long. Every Big Boy I own barely fits this red box inside a sleeve.

IMG_6194.jpeg

Even a 125 gram 400 fits, although they had a special silk box.

IMG_6193.jpeg
The yellow Jumbo box is a special.

The pamphlet is not stapled. It’s a fold out. It lays flat in the yellow box.

Once upon a time Robert L Marx shipped an enormous pipe in that special yellow box.

And there’s a great big almost eight inch by over two inch wide and two and a half inch tall pipe in that old, worn box.

Marx better start praying, the letters let him off the hook.:)
 
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telescopes

Pipe Dreamer and Star Gazer
The normal red Marxman box was 2 inches wide, one and a half inches tall (but would expand upwards) and seven inches long. Every Big Boy I own barely fits this red box inside a sleeve.

View attachment 273448

Even a 125 gram 400 fits, although they had a special silk box.

View attachment 273453
The yellow Jumbo box is a special.

The pamphlet is not stapled. It’s a fold out. It lays flat in the yellow box.

Once upon a time Robert L Marx shipped an enormous pipe in that special yellow box.

And there’s a great big almost eight inch by over two inch wide and two and a half inch tall pipe in that old, worn box.

Marx better start praying, the letters let him off the hook.:)
That is not a Marxman box. Marx had two boxes. A leather one for the 400. Everything else came in the red box.

Jumbo is a generic term. The pipe is not a Marxman Jumbo nor is it a Marxman. I have a copy of the flat layout brochure. I also have the more common one. What happens when a lawyer KNOWINGLY puts evidence that he knows to be false before the court. Be careful. You might end up getting dis-piped, LOL.

I had a friend once, a hillbilly such as yourself, who indulged himself in the fantasy of "Well, you never know, it just might be...."

He had a lot of tales to tell. He lived in Ironton, Missouri when that was my home as well. But, he could look at a stick in a forest, tell you about how it was left over from the Indians, most likely Osage, and make every argument why he MIGHT be right. He always ended by saying, "Well, you never know. Can you prove to me that it isn't and Indian spear."
 
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Briar Lee

Lifer
Sep 4, 2021
4,964
14,287
Humansville Missouri
I’m entirely booked next week or I’d go.

A blessing and often a curse, I’ve had since a child is my people don’t see or view the world like “the Baptists” do.

It’s almost certainly cultural, although it might be heriditary.

I don’t really see a pipe, when I see that Doodler.

I imagine all the ways it could have rested in that yellow box. It didn’t grow there.:)

It began as a very large burl on a mountainside in Algeria.

The Berber said praise Allah, what a big one!


Then it found its way over time to somebody who could fashion this stem out of a rod of vulcanite, and expertly make a bit and fit that stem to three points on the shank he’d filed square, and double drilled, and chamfered.

That was not the first time he’d done that.

It was factory made.

IMG_6182.jpeg


Look at the flash reflecting.

IMG_6177.jpeg

The seller examined and photographed the pipe but he was not skilled.

Ungrateful grandson, peddling a pipe his mother saved she bought her father?

They saved that ugly pipe for him.;)
 

LudwigB88

Starting to Get Obsessed
Nov 4, 2023
259
377
It started as a test briar to see what different tools would do. Long, long ago. Then one day I had to decide if it should just go in the trash. Seeing as how the briar came from American Pipes and was drilled by Tinski or one of his minions I popped a stem in it and fired it up. Now I only smoke it at night, to hide the shame of smoking an ugly pipe.

View attachment 5821
Elephant man !
 
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Scottmi

Lifer
Oct 15, 2022
3,756
53,524
Orcas, WA