Blog by Dal Stanton

Last year, when my wife and I were in the US for some months for our periodic furlough reconnecting with friends, family, and sponsors of our work in Bulgaria, I was also trying to connect with pipes –  I love the search!  As I’ve done many times before, I was trolling through the eBay offerings.  I came across a listing for a lot of pipes, which the seller described as:  Huge Lot Of 66 Smoking Pipes Pre-Owned Pre-Smoked and Deeply Loved.  The further description was that the Lot of 66 was a donated item, that the collection belonged to one owner, and they repeated that the collection had been “Loved”.  There were several other pictures providing break downs of the overview below.  As you might expect, I started going through the pictures to see what I could see – the seller said that they were…

Blog by Dal Stanton

When I first laid my eyes on this Savinelli, I didn’t realize it was a Savinelli.  I was in Athens, Greece, tooling through the Monastiraki market area at the foot of the Acropolis, next door to the Forum.  As I explored I found one shop nestled on a tree-covered side street with a table set on the front sidewalk with all kinds of paraphernalia. It drew me like a bee to pollen!  Two congenial men were sitting behind the table conversing in Greek. I assumed they chatted about all manner of life, family, politics…, and what is usually the case, as I drew near, their conversation stopped, and the English began.  As I perused the table with strategic disinterest, I saw one pipe on the table that did not grab me too much.  The shop owner asked me if I was interested in pipes?  I said…