Uber Pipe Prices

[saltedplug]

Don't know about you, but $7500 for Chonowitsch or $3500 for a Todd Johnson seems a mite steep. Money spent to get such pipes is silly money. Or is it money not well spent and in that regard silly. Or is the boy silly who has such money and spends it?
These price are achievable given that a retailer has so priced them. But they are not just silly but indicate that the buyer has money to burn.
Burn baby, burn.

 

[prairiedruid]

Here I thought the thread was about hiring someone to drive over and smoke your pipe for you...

 

[georged]

Andy Warhol once stood on a pedestal, then got off it, leaving nothing behind but the pedestal, painted white, and a sign bearing the title, "Invisible Sculpture - Andy Warhol - Mixed Media." He sold both that and a blank canvas for an obscene amount.
Check this out for more of the same sort of thing:
http://cavemancircus.com/2015/07/30/15-ridiculous-pieces-of-art-that-sold-for-millions-of-dollars/
Some percentage of collectors of anything---pipes included---don't collect the works themselves, but the fame of their creator. (Whether the creator's fame is well earned is an entirely separate question).

 

[framitz]

Money value is arbitrary. Need versus want. If you have 3 million in sock what difference. If you live on budget what choic e. Shel

 

[alan73]

The first couple of Jess pipes smokingpipes.com put up for sale, sold really quick. There are many deep pocketed pipe collectors.
Talking about crazy artwork prices, the Leonardo da Vinci painting which recently sold for $450 million exchanged hands in 2005 for $10,000.
Bitcoin is another example of crazy price movements.

 

[sablebrush52]

I guess it comes down to personal passions, priorities, and the ability to pay for them.

I would not spend that kind of money on a pipe, even though I can afford to, because my priorities are different. The pipes that I own will smoke as well as anything available on the market at any price. And as much as I am fascinated with pipes and tobaccos, there are very real fiscal limits that I won't cross.

 

[cosmicfolklore]

$12,000 to $20,000 bicycles fly off of the bike shop walls. $20,000 for a Swiss watch? They're all over the place. I used to resize and re-prong $50,000 - $200,000 rings all day, for years. $50,000 will get you an budget level Merceds, but I see $100,000 Mercedes on the road, here in dirt road Alabama. Kids get $500 tennis shoes, and line up to buy them when new ones are released. I've seen it.
If you just want to stay warm, you could buy a $10 thrift store coat, or you could spend $2,000 on Brooks Bros. Museums are full of things that the rich have owned, worn, or used. It is baffling. I understand folks that don't understand. But, when you have something that demand is so high on, and the thing is rare... You can ask a price that only reaches the few who can afford it. And, sure, sure, it sucks to be someone who cannot afford it. I'm there with you, on the verge of fixed income.
But, if a pipe really spoke to me, and if it was being sold by a retailer who would allow me to pay layaway, I wouldn't think that buying a pipe like that was outrageous. I see it as an investment into myself, my own joy that comes from using something like that. I have a $1500 Becker, which is the most expensive pipe I have. Magic, or just my own psychology, holding and using it is charged with a certain achievement for myself, a certain art magic. Sure, sure, it's silly. But, it's a silly I share with the elite, the reckless, and the absurd. ::
Different strokes for different folks.

 

[saltedplug]

I was raised Catholic in the 60s, on the cusp of priests who could do no wrong and had stock phrases in hand so as to have some tact turning down dreadful Sunday dinner invitations. Having Father at the table was the next best thing to feeding Jesus. I also went to the Catholic grade school taught by a waning number of nuns who were among some of the most miserable and twisted people I've ever met. In this context, when one of them was asked a question about human suffering, they would tilt their head toward heaven and whine, in an especially vexatious voice, "It's a mystery. . ."
Perhaps some people are willing to pay the prices is similarly "a mystery," but in this case you can be sure that heaven has little to do with it.

 

[warren]

saltedplug: How I spend my moneys is only my business. Your opinion would never enter into the equation. Anyone smoking a pipe obviously has money to burn and does.
I should add, I appreciate your obvious concern regarding mine or anyone's spending habits.

 

[saltedplug]

Like me there are those who would enjoy modern art but can't. George's reference to paintings of a single color without form selling for uber dollars in my opinion illustrates the peculiar appreciation skills of modern art enthusiasts. Tom Wolfe in The Painted Word wrote, "I had assumed that in art, if nowhere else, seeing is believing. Well how very shortsighted! Now, at last, on April 28, 1974, I could see. I had gotten it backward all along. Not "seeing is believing," you ninny, but "believing is seeing," for Modern Art has become completely literary: the paintings and other works exist only to illustrate the text." In short, modern art requires a critic's perceptually so rendered that it can allow appreciation when looking at a painting in one color without form. Appreciation as a function of a score card.
I like like modern art from the Impressionists through Kahlo. But I can go no further.

 

[sablebrush52]

In the case of high priced works of art, the market is distorted by tax breaks that the "collector" gets when he donates the work to a museum. The expense can be monetized to the owner's advantage.
The thing about Rothko, not that I'm defending the prices, is that you don't get the effect in a photograph. In person, his layering of color sets off a very strong visual vibration, almost like they're radiating energy, that simply doesn't come across in a photograph.
In reading the responses here and in other threads, I'm prompted to ask the question:
Are we defined by the things that we possess, or are we defined by our character?

 

[saltedplug]

Character; but hey this America, the haven of capitalism, and here the good life has been precisely defined as money. So although it may be that the spiritual precedes the material, but if so, Americans are blind. We are our possessions more than any other culture has ever been. Advertising is seductive. If they don't sell you with one pitch, they'l keep pitching until they do.
Christmas, the highest holy day in the West, has been entirely subverted by business. (smokingpipes is no longer supposed to have my personal information, but if I get another one of their trashy Christmas Cards. . .) Christmas celebrates the birth in human form of the divine, yet gift-giving has replaced this; and we all know the grumbling going on in the heads of families: "Their gift is hardly equal to mine"; or "what a piece of trash-sure hope they've got the receipt."

 

[cosmicfolklore]

No, I don't think that we are defined by the things that we own. We are entertained by them, amused, but what other think of us, is none of our business. Maybe some want status, hype, whatever. But, I could care less about that also. I can be impressed with a well kept Volkswagen Bug or Pinto, just as much as a Picasso in the bedroom. But, if someone had a Picasso in the bedroom, I wouldn't think of him as "The Guy with the Picasso in the Bedroom." He might be the asshole with the Picasso, or the sucker with the Picasso. But, ultimately... heaven and the camel through the needle sort of thing. ::

 

[briarblues]

Are these prices set too high? If they sell, then obviously not. Are they cherished pipes by better than average carvers? I would say yes. Jess is not a young man. I guess he is in his late 60's or early 70's. When he fully retires from carving pipes, his pipes will appreciate in value, as we have seen with Sixten and Bo's pipes. Todd is still young and hopefully a long road ahead, so we shall see if he develops a reputation akin to a Jess or a Bo. If he does, then when he retires his pipes will also appreciate in value. So while we may be shocked by the sticker prices, these might be not so dumb investments, for those with enough cash and those willing to take a chance.
All we need do is look at the current asking prices for some other highly regarded carvers. Once Poul Ilsted passed, the prices on his fantastic pipes soared. Peter Hedegaard, and Peter Heeschen pipe prices have also climbed.
I only wish I was smart enough, years ago to build a collection of the above mentioned carvers works.
Regards

Michael J. Glukler

 

[warren]

And now religion enters into the discussion.
"All Americans are blind." "We are our possessions." Pretty presumptive to speak for the entire population of a country. Please! You may be what you own and may see every other American in that light but, I really do not think you are in a position to judge every other citizen until or, unless you've met each and everyone of us.
And, to those members of other faiths ... my abject apologies. I know you have a different idea as to what is the highest holy day in the "West." For many Americans the highest holy day is the anniversary of the death of Elvis. :D

 

[cosmicfolklore]

January 8th

May The King rest in peace.

 

[cosmicfolklore]

January 8th

May The King rest in peace.

 

[alan73]

my uncle is an Elvis impersonator, funny shit. He is with you warren .

 

[alan73]

I once let a homeless black guy named warren move into my basement apartment. He liked Elvis

 

[warren]

We Warrens are not a picky bunch with regard to habitat. Even a rabbit warren can be acceptable.