How many pipes do you really use?

I have about a dozen but actively only spoke 3-5

I've got right around 110 pipes. I smoke about 50 of them often enough to remember when I last smoked them, I'd say. Something like 12-15 of the others are pipes I'll probably never smoke again because I just didn't turn out to like them for one reason or another. Too heavy. Uncomfortable for some other reason. Don't smoke well. Whatever. The rest are just pipes I don't like nearly as well as the ones I do smoke. I'll revisit them at some point, or maybe sell them off. I dunno.

53 total pipes, smoke ALL in rotations of 10-11, same method since around 1998. Each one gets smoked pretty much same amount over the course of a year

Ed

If you only ever smoke 8 of them, how big a chore can it be?

Not nearly enough out of way too many.

It’s more the idea that when I had one nice pipe and some cobs, I didn’t think about which pipe to use. I was happy having my regular pipe. I didn’t think about some I have that I need to clean up and wax, or try to figure out which box had a pipe that I was thinking about using, or arguing with myself about using a new pipe if I don’t think I’ll stick with it as a regular, or feel like I should be paying more attention to the other pipes I have since I have them, or be worried about how they’re stored, if they are potentially being damaged stacked in boxes, or the fact that I have them, but I’m not really enjoying them, which seems wrong, or… Maybe these things never cross your mind, but for me, it can take some of the fun of owning a lot of pipes out of it. There are many times all of these seem like fun, but there are times they can seem like work as well to me.

I am somewhere over 100 pipes, I tend to smoke a handful because with the time constraints and the life I am living, I do not give the other pipes the time of day, not because they are bad smokers more because I know which ones are definitely good smokers and I want to clean my smokers as needed.

Kind of the way with guns...my striker fired ones are dependable, easier maintained when filed stripping and lubricating, so that is what I grab for a quick range session....1911, and rifles not so much they are therefore probably feeling neglected, but it is not their fault.

I like the wild bunch close at hand and I keep em clean, three smoke rule.

Over the course of a year, I'd say that about half get smoked. Some, very frequently, others only once or twice. I need to fix that.

This hasn't stopped me from buying or making more. 

For me, [acoustic] guitars and pipes both feed my need for beautiful wooden objects.

Keep in mind that how often you smoke really has an impact in terms of how this question is answered. Weekend or once day smokers are on a different scale than someone like me who smokes 4 to 6 bowls on a typical day. I’ve got 130 to 140 pipes in the smoking collection. Probably 30 to 40 of those see more use than the others. About every three months, I keep track and smoke through all of them. At the rate I smoke, it takes 3 to 4 weeks to complete a full round through the smoking collection.

Down to about 15 and 5-6 are regulars.

I don’t smoke much at home anymore but at the cabin, i have 36 pipes and probably smoke 4 of them when I am there. Granted, if I lived there, I would likely use more

Yes, I am very lucky. I’ve worked out of a home office since 1998 and can smoke in the house.  My wife loves the smell of a pipe as she grew up around her Dad who chain smoked one pipe.