On Mondays and Thursdays Smokingpipes.com list any fresh estate and new pipes they get it. I have been watching for this update since it began as I always wanted first crack at an estate I might like. I rarely bought new pipes this way.
I got some of my best deals being johnny on the spot and it was fun getting psyched for the Monday and Thursday up dates. Since I was only buying American artisan pipes my choices were limited usually any where from 20-50 pipes per update. For the last year the numbers of American estate pipes has dropped to a trickle but today has set a record. There are only 3 fresh American estates which is amazing to me as I have followed this section of pipes for a decade or more.
I have no idea why the numbers have tanked. I honestly don't even have a good guess as my mind is having trouble processing this phenomena.
If anyone has ideas or guesses or know for a fact, please post here as I am totally befuddled.
Others have already suggested some factors that are very much at play and true, but I still figured I should chime-in with some clarification.
Specifically that the number of pipes you quoted today (3 pieces marked 'new', around noon EST) are leftovers from the total of 12 American estates that we listed last Thursday. I believe that 12 American estates on a given update is about as low as that number has been for months, but we've had several updates in the last few weeks where 18-24 American estates were listed at one time. As you might expect, these numbers have a lot to do with what we have coming in at any given time, which we cannot control.
This came up about a year ago--the recognition that our estate updates weekly, as well as the number of estates on the website at any given time had fallen, and that was true particularly late 2020 and early 2021. The number of estates coming through the doors had slowed down significantly. Though we can't be sure why, we're pretty sure it was pandemic-related. My guess is that during the pandemic two things were broadly true:
1. People had more time on their hands and were able to sell some of their own pipes themselves. This is supported by what seemed to be an increase in eBay pipe listings during the lockdown months.
2. Based on consumer habits across all online retail during that time, as well as stimulus money, I think it's safe to assume that pipe smokers weren't reliant on trading pipes in to be able to fund new purchases. Everyone was stuck at home and had much more spending money in their pockets.
Just how many Stanwell pipes can one buy for the cost of a canceled family cruise or trip to Disney World? Although our estate numbers took a hit during the pandemic, the rest of the business was very strong.
Fast forward to the last few months and estate numbers are much, much better. Some of you who have had pipes in the evaluation process these last few weeks have been (and continue to be) very patient with us while we do our best to complete the offers in a timely fashion, but it's been tough because we have had so much coming in, thankfully! This is what we love to see--a ton of very cool and varied stuff coming in that many of us would jump at the chance to give a new home to. I haven't seen our selection at any time be this good in years.
Overall, YTD our estate numbers are up 15% and since I'm the one picking pipes for each Monday and Thursday update, I can tell you the selection has been much better and I'd say the size of the updates on a given day are probably 15-20% larger than they were 18 months ago. The more we've been putting up, the more have been selling quickly. That might make it more difficult to see the upward trend if you're not looking at the website without blinking for most of each day.
It's also true that you see smaller updates during events like Black Friday, etc., but that's only because we've spent the last many weeks pushing as much to the website as possible to ensure a good selection during the promotion.
I hope this helps, guys. And keep those estate pipes coming our way!
