Product Description
Finally, a book for pipemen that tells it like it is. This is the first lifestyle guide for the inveterate and novice pipe smoker alike. Topics range from pipe and tobacco selection to collecting to etiquette. A primer to some, rollicking good laughs to others.

Confessions of a Pipeman … An irreverent guide for today’s pipe-smoking man

When I started estatetobaccopipes.com about 15 months ago, it was more a bit of an experiment. But obviously some folks liked it ;-)
Thanks to your continued usage and positive feedback, and despite my crappy English (I am a German expat living in Paraguay) the site has become one of the reference sites when it comes to finding estate pipe auctions (or pipe related sales and auctions in general) on Ebay, in a convenient and friendly environment.

I am honored by the support of the worldwide pipesmoker community. And will dedicate a bit more of my time to the maintenance of the site and adding more content and value for our visitors.

But I need your help and a few minutes of your time.

There are MANY fine pipemakers out there, some big companies, some solitary artists, some retired, many still active.

I do not know them all. Or, to say it with Bilbo Baggins from „The Lord of the Rings“: “I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.” Or something like that. ;-)

Means: the list of pipe brands and makers in our Ebay search interface needs improving.

Of course it makes no sense to list each and every pipemaker there who made a handful of decent pipes.
But I would like to add 10 or so additional names.

So please take a minute, leave a comment using the form below, and tell me what wellknown or elitist name(s) you search for on a regular basis and want to have added to our one-click list (the column titled “Store Pages”).

And while we are at it: if there is something related to pipesmoking that you really would want to see on the blog, please tell me as well!

Thanks for your time, and happy browsing and collecting! (and of course always a good draw ;-) )

Search engine optimization (SEO) is not a main topic of this blog, but sometimes I will drop a note or two. This time I noticed something really positive. Over the past year, Google & Co have done a fairly good job reducing the number of mere spam pages in their top 10 search results. And they have achieved something else:

A dumb search index is not content aware, it does not „understand“ the pages and the context of the stuff it is indexing. So if you were searching with a keyword like „estate pipes“, like the visitors of estatetobaccopipes.com do, you often got a lot of sites dealing with ‚real estate‘ and ‚drainage pipes‘, what is exactly what a pipe smoker is craving for… ;-)

Now search engines are still far from really being „intelligent“, they still do not „understand“ what a page is about or what you as a searcher intend to find when you enter search term or a question or regular expression. But they are getting better at it. Not just experimental sites like WolframAlpha, but also mainstream search engines like Google, Yahoo or Bing.

Things like LSI (latent semantic indexing) and a bunch of other tricky algorhythms seem to do a slightly better job sorting web pages into the right context.

Basically the search engines see that the exact phrase „estate pipes“ usually shows up on pages that contain other keywords like smoking, briar pipes, pipe tobacco, collecting pipes, and so on – and less often on pages that contain stuff like ‚drainage‘, ‚sewer pipes‘, and so on. So in the future they assume that someone who searches something containing the two words „estate pipes“ is more likely interested in a site about pipe smoking and used pipes, and less interested in real estate, construction and sewer systems…

That process of getting smarter has accelerated during the past year, and hopefully is continued!

Proper cleaning of the pipe and stem is an inevitable part of the pipesmokers daily routine.

And sometimes it has to be a little more. From time to time, or after an extended period of careless use, any pipe becomes kinda „smelly“.

And in case you bought a beautiful estate pipe, you will quite often find that it still has that distinct smell of whatever the previous owner has preferred to smoke…

In those cases the „salt & alcohol“ method works great. What it is exactly and how to apply it correctly without doing any harm to your favorite piece of briar user „SmokeRingsPipeDreams“ has shared in a series of YouTube videos some time ago.

Nicely explained!

Check these out:

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Now THAT guy certainly is not your typical relaxed pipesmoker… ;-)

OK folks – second try. Some months ago I had already started to integrate a pipe-smoking-blog with my main site estatetobaccopipes.com – but my previous webhoster screwed up the server and in the process of moving the site to my own server the poor young blog got lost… ;-)

Now the blog is back.

There are a few more things to do, some tweaking needs to be done for a full integration with the main site, but technically we are good to go.

So – WHY a blog at all?

The main site has only ONE purpose: to give you a nice and convenient way to find current estate pipe auctions and deals on Ebay. Period.

Everything else will go into the pipe blog.

Tobacco reviews, bios of famous pipe smokers, news and features on great pipe makers & brands, tutorials on pipe smoking, repairs and maintenance, funny videos, and whatever else we come across.

Of course it will take a while to build up a decent amount of content – but hey, you have to start somewhere…

So bookmark us or subscribe to the feed and check back often!

Happy smoking and always a good draw!