Whatever happened to the middle ground?



Chet Gottfried writes:

What strikes me odd about the group is that there's one side talking about pipes costing several hundred dollars and another talking about pipes under $20. Whatever happened to the middle ground?

Mark Tinsky replies:

I think the middle ground has disappeared. As cheap pipe prices have gradually gone up there s no decent pipe at $50 or $60 anymore just $30 pipes full of fills and other manufacturing horrors that now have become the middle ground. Men are funny shoppers. While women seem to readily adjust there scales to take into account inflation and other economic factors. Mostly I think ,generalizing outrageously here, that they love to spend and in most cases the more the better. If a silk blouse by a certain manufacturer costs $35 one year they expect that it will cost $38 THE NEXT. There scales adjust accordingly. I, like most men, who are not avid consumers, don't figure prices like this. If I broke down and bought a dress shirt 5 years ago at $11.00 which I considered then an extravagance I'm certainly not going to pay MORE than that now if I have to buy another. I still hunger for the days of nickel candy bars. I really haven t bought much candy since. Why should I have to pay 10x more to get less of a candy bar?

Unfortunately this same logic applies to buying pipes. A person who likes a certain brand and model remembers what it costs 5 -10 years ago when he bought it. At this point he may have lost it or broken it beyond repair. He liked the pipe and wants to replace it exactly. He goes to his local shop and finds out the price has doubled. He may never have spent more than $30 on a pipe in his life and he s certainly not going to spend $60 now!

While many pipe manufacturers may have their heads in the ground, they're not all universally stupid. When all they re $60 Non Pareils are not selling anymore and generic $30 pipes are still selling strongly they realized in order to reclaim their former market they were going to have to come up with a $30 Non Pareil again. So what do you think they did ?

Probably the $60 Non Pareil was a fair value. Maybe it had a couple small fills, but had decent grain and was well polished rather than lacquered. Maybe it didn' t have a bowl full of stain. Well the NEW $30 NON PAREIL will certainly have none of these features; rather it will be a $30 quality pipe with Non Pareil stamped on it.

I remember when an average GBD was a nice pipe. It had a moderate cost as well as incorporating a reasonably priced top of the line in the Virgin and the Unique. Sometime in the 80's the line turned into a piece of crap, a joke. In some cases there was more putty than briar in them. What happened, GBD resisted raising their prices and instead lowered there quality as did most of the other mid range pipes of that era such as Stanwell,Savinelli,Comoy, and Peterson etc. When they found their customers were not willing to pay more money to retain the same previous value they had received in their pipes they lowered their standards.

The middle ground in pipes has disappeared along with good factory jobs. We are divided between those who purchase expensive high quality pipes and those who purchase what's left. Either work in the service industry at $5 per hour or be a computer engineer at 50k. It's become a stark choice.

American Smoking Pipe Co.
HC 88 Box 223
Pocono Lake, Pa. 18347
mt@AmSmoke.com

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