LOL! That’s not a stretch of the realm of possibility with me—there have been times in the past with a book or toy that I’ve taken the “when in doubt, buy both” approach. It was mainly a budgetary concern at the time that I just didn’t pull the trigger on the 904 KS. But, the chunkier shaping of the newer 904 did give me pause—I think I’d prefer a ’70s version in terms of aesthetics. When the 904 KS sold and wasn’t on the site, I still didn’t have the disposable income for the 920 KS. When that disappeared, I assumed it was sold not to be seen again. When these two pipes were no longer available, that’s when I felt that pang, “Oh man, I really should’ve just grabbed at least one of them when I had the chance—I’ll never see those again.” You can imagine my shock and surprise when the 920 KS got relisted. I contacted my friend at Savinelli and reserved it immediately. I wasn’t going to pass up on the gift of getting a second chance at something I regretted not getting.
Savinelli’s own website lists a lot of stuff that is available nowhere else. I check there often. Around Easter, they had a couple of egg shaped pipes with removable briar magnetic domes that were really cool. They were gone within a day or two.
Apart from appreciating the long history of the company, I love the aesthetic of a good number of Savinelli shapes (they have their share of shapes that hold no appeal for me, but that’s true of any marque). The 601 and 606 kind of define what I think of in terms of a classic Bent Billiard. I love the 320 Author shape. I enjoy the variations of finish available on a lot of the pipes. The Corallo di Mare is such a weird, organic rustication that I find fascinating and oddly beautiful; the same is true of the Estella finish. These two finishes are especially interesting when looked at side by side next to the “normal” version. With my Ross Macdonald book collection, I started out buying paperbacks to read. I’d come across the same title from different decades with completely different designs and would buy them—the ’50s paperbacks had cool, painted illustrated covers; the ’60s versions had photographic ones; the ’70s had typographic-centric designs. Same book, but vastly different and cool covers. I talked about this in an interview I did with the Library of America back in 2016 with regard to a coffee table book that I designed that was illustrated with my personal book collection. Link
here.