Nice finds
@torthur
When I started building a rotation of pipes, I 'won' two estate pipes on fleabay that were rubbish.
From then on I mostly dealt with two professional German ebay dealers who ran regular auctions [postage for up to 8 pipes was only $12usd]
Most of the pipes I won were NOS [new old stock]
The several estate pipes from them were lightly used briars that had been professionally cleaned.
Apart from a couple of pipes - a Savinelli Churchwarden and a Volkan Reverse Calabash, most of my pipes were won on ebay at very reasonable cost [Two Lorenzo VIP Plateaus I scored for $15 each for example]
The 'trick' to scoring bargains on ebay is to put low bids on multiple pipes.
For whatever reason a lot of buyers are only interested in well known name brands.
I've got quite a few Bruyere Garantie briars that are well crafted and good smokers.
One of the German sellers had a heap of Venini briars made in the 80's.
No other buyers seemed interested so I managed to score seven at an average cost of around $35.
All but one take a pipe cleaner to the draught hole and are good smokers.
This is one example, a 1980's Venini Half Bent Apple;
The "addiction" to which you refer is known as PAD - Pipe acquisition disorder.
I've got over 40 pipes in regular rotation and even more sitting unused in a box.
It got to the point where I've banned myself from even perusing ebay pipe auctions because I'm unable to help myself.
TAD [tobacco acquisition disorder] on the other hand, is not a disorder IMO because planning for the future is the sensible thing to do.
No such thing as 'too much' tobacco, especially not in these uncertain times.
