Out of curiosity I wanted to find what I might find be on here about my Ebay pipes, so I thought I'd do a better job of introducing myself.
I do live in Oregon now, and do an Ebay business selling pipes. I sell about 16 pipes a week, as that is about all I can consistently handle, since I refurbish them and do long descriptions, which takes more time.
I started collecting pipes in college, and in 1983 met a fellow who was a pipe collector, and he started telling me about the early brands, rivalries, and changes the companies had gone through, like Dunhill and Sasieni, Barling and Comoy's, and so on. I found all that info very interesting, as I had never really thought about pipe makers and their history. It turned out my new friend had about 150 pipes in his collection, which seemed crazy to me.
I ended up collecting estate pipes myself soon after, and ended up with about 150 pipes eventually myself. Most of my pipes were nothing to write home about. It was fun to go to antique malls and swap meets in search of pipes.
Around 1998 I went to one flea market and the guy had a bunch of Dunhill pipes I purchased for $2.75 a piece, OMG, what fun! I was curious about what they were worth, and more info, and in doing some internet searching I found a site called Ebay. They had some Dunhill pipes, and the prices varied a lot. I didn't realize some were early in the bidding, and those were cheaper than others, etc. Auctions! What an idea!
I opened my Ebay account in 1998, and eventually sold off some of the Dunhill pipes, and some of my other pipes, and wanted to add some fun info about the makers and so on, as I thought the history was interesting.
At the time I was a commercial photographer in Orange County, Ca, and was able to take nice photos of the pipes. I've sold pipes on Ebay off and on ever since. I really liked the site called The Kaywoodie Compendium, which sadly no longer exists. It was a great repository of information, and it helped me to gain respect for the brand, which I had formerly thought was all cheap pipes not worthy of consideration.
After the Kaywoodie Compendium site was gone, I had thoughts of trying to recreate it, and kept my auction photos of pipes I'd sell, just in case they might be of value later on. At some point, in searching the internet for more info on makers, I found the site called Pipedia. Wow, lots of info there, but not very many photos of makes on many of the pages.
I had made myself a Word Doc about many of the pipe companies, which was over 500 pages long, and was able to use some of the info I had gathered to add pages to Pipedia where no info existed. And yes, lots of stuff on the internet that I had found was not reliable, or true. Such is the internet, unfortunately. But mainly, I was able to send Scott Thile lots of photos, and ads, and such, to fill out many of the pages which showed no pipes, or photos of the makers, or catalogs or print ads. And Pipedia is able to be edited by users, photos added, corrections made, and so on. So if you can contribute there, it's good!
I certainly don't consider myself an expert on pipes, or have any exhaustive understanding on their history and makers, but I do like to try to figure the stuff out for my listings.
One fellow who had a big impact on why I list things the way I do was Tony Soderman, aka MrCan on Ebay. His writeups were pretty amazing, and always somewhat exhaustive in what he wrote, very LONG descriptions, with lots of exclamation points, all caps, bold lettering, and so on!!!!! And there are a lot of others who are very knowledgeable about pipes who I respect a great deal.
My goal in my listings is to show the pipes I sell with lots of clear photos, and honest descriptions. I emphasize the positives and mention the negatives, so people get what they expect, what I state they are, and hopefully no surprises or disappointments. I do, definitely make some mistakes at times, but not intentionally. And am happy to try to make things right if I do screw up, or miss something, or I don't edit my listing very well.
The reason nobody sees me at the big pipe shows is because I can't afford to travel to them, and only sell stuff on Ebay. Hopefully this might help with any curiosity about who that Doug Valitchka guy is. I would like to become more communicative on the site here, I just have normally been too busy to do so.
Regards - Doug
How many pipes do you estimate you have in your collection now? I'm not sure what's the closest show to you but Vegas might not be too expensive to get to. Looking forward to seeing you here more.
