The days may be gone when millions of mostly male pipe smokers, and college freshmen everywhere, lit up and puffed away, but now there is a brisk collectibles market for smokers and non-smokers alike.
We’re talking $10,000 meerschaum pipes and $1,500 smoking jackets here. You might hold on to old tins of tobacco too. It’s simple supply and demand, according to experts.
Chuck Stanion, editor of Pipes & Tobacco magazine, said the decreasing number of pipe users has resulted in less availability of related products, which, in turn, has driven up the price of what is obtainable in the market. “What you have,” he said, “is fewer people smoking pipes but enjoying it more–like gourmet tea drinkers.”
One example of this passion will be the annual Chicagoland International Pipe and Tobbaciana Show May 13 through 15 at Pheasant Run in St. Charles.
About 4,000 pipe connoisseurs from 56 nations have registered, according to show founder Frank Burla, and there will be 282 tables of displays by manufacturers, individual carvers, and antique dealers and collectors. His first show 10 years ago drew 400 visitors and 80 tables.
Stanion said best estimates would be that 1 million to 2 million Americans still occasionally smoke pipes, but a better measuring stick might be tobacco sales and federal taxes spent on it–a figure that has not shown any growth since taking big hits with U.S. government anti-smoking campaigns. In 1970 it was estimated that 52 million pounds of pipe tobacco was sold in this country. Last year the figure had dropped to 5 million.
But Burla, a 35-year collector who has his own museum–the Frank P. Burla Antique Pipe & Tobacciana Museum in the west suburbs–describes interest at his end of the business as hotter than ever.
“We’ve got carvers from all over the world coming to our show, and pipe smokers and collectors really respond to this,” he said. “There just aren’t that many opportunities for enthusiasts to gather like this.”
Tobacco itself is becoming a collectible, like vintage wines. That’s because it has become more expensive to import from countries such as Syria and Turkey, which grow coveted varieties.
At the same time, American farms that specialized in some of the rare, pipe-friendly tobaccos have ceased producing.
Burla said pipe tobacco is not hurt by age.