All of this reminds me of an event that the Los Angeles Pipe Club was holding in its early days. At that time we were meeting at a small tobacconist who was trying to make a go of it in Old Town Pasadena. It was a kind of show and tell event and the members were showing off their leather pipe bags, and other leather accessories, along with the small fancy artisan pipes that were popular 8-10 years ago.
I showed up with a beat up paper bag, and some of the members were giving me sort of smug looks. I sat down at the table and began to pull out the pipes I'd brought for show and tell, my 1908 Barling calabash, an 1883 Barling bent diamond shank billiard with a sterling silver windcap and silver fitments, a 1907 cased unsmoked Barling companion set, a 1909 Barling Motor windcap bent billiard, a cased Barling billiard with an amber stem, and so on and so on. It was fun to watch the reaction as the smug looks gave way to astonishment.
Don't judge a book by its cover.