Are Old Pipes Worth Anything?

 Check out this great video of pipe making at Alfred Dunhill's factory. Dunhill pipes are made in England and for some, they are the finest tobacco pipe in the world. It is also a great pipe option if you are still looking for a smoking pipe. Sea foam pipe is a pipe made from the mineral sepiolite, also known as sea foam. 

Seafoam tubes can be fashioned from a block of seafoam or made from seafoam dust collected after being cut and mixed with a binder and then pressed into a tube shape. Well-smoked old seafoam pipes are prized by collectors for their antique and distinctive color. When smoked, seafoam pipes gradually change color, and old seafoam pipes take on growing hues of yellow, orange, red, and amber from the base. 

Watkinsville Attic Treasures Antique Store has some styrofoam pipes and can tell you the cost of antique styrofoam pipes. Owner Charles Stewart is a pipe collecting guide with encyclopedic knowledge of rare pipes and their value, including ancient sea foam. Thus, this is an illustrated account of pipes no longer made, pipes no longer smoked, but pipes that are valued, loved, valued and collected today for their beauty, carvings and rarity. 

The generally accepted evidence, which is often repeated in many treatises on the history of pipes, is the illustration of a man smoking a clay pipe in Anthony Chute, Tobacco (1595). Clay pipes were first used in Great Britain in the 16th century after tobacco was imported from America. The smoking pipe was changed from English clay to foam in 1720 ("seafoam" in German), a material found in Africa and Turkey. 

Even after the clay tube broke and could no longer be used for tobacco use, fragments of the clay mouthpiece found an alternative use. Clay pipes were not used in residential construction until about the 1980s, so some buildings built during this time may still have clay sewers or other types of old plumbing material. Long pipes provide cooler smoke, but are also more likely to break, so are often thrown away after use. 

Rosehip wood shed sea foam and clay, and to this day remains the best material for pipe smoking. Seafoam became an excellent substitute for the terracotta pipes of that era and remains popular to this day, although briar pipes have become the most common smoking pipes since the mid-1800s. Seafoam must be fresh before the pipe can be cleaned, and briar must rest after a few days of smoking, so when combined it has some of the disadvantages of both materials. 

The modern heather pipe, not as good as the modern seafoam, continues to be just a practical smoking tool, more practical than form. In our modern culture, cigarettes, cigars and other forms of tobacco use have largely replaced pipes. It is considered a niche habit rather than a common way of smoking.