Looking For Comoy's Russet Information

SmokingPipes had one on sale, but it didn't specify when it was made...not sure it was a PreCadgon issue.


www.smokingpipes.com/pipes/estate/england/moreinfo.cfm?product_id=338993

I am not an expert on Comoy's, but I've looked into dating them extensively when pondering buying a non-hallmarked 296 Canadian. Rather hard to date to be honest, I think most of the time it boils down to: before/after 1950, Pre/post-merger. With the latter, the stem logo is the thing that decides it. Unfortunately, yours doesn't have one so I am guessing it's a replacement. Pity, because that would be a great help with solving the Cadogan question. I know that some of the later ones had only stickers for logos, but most merger pipes I've seen still had the logo stamped so I think you'd see at least an indent even with the color scraped off. So nothing there.

Personally, I'd lean towards Cadogan on this one. Naturally, this is conjecture, but I'll be thinking aloud here.

"Russet" seems to be chosen based on the color of the finish. IMHO, this alone reminds me of corporate overtones rather than the Comoy's tradition of naming their lines. You'll not find a single line named after a color in the previous catalogues and this one certainly doesn't feature in any of those either. Coincidentally, Dunhill also had a rather short-lived Russet line, launched in 1988. It's a far cry to say these two are connected, but I thought it's worth mentioning. Contemporary inspiration from a competitor perhaps?

There's plenty of post-1980 pipes with 3-digit shape codes so that one's doesn't decide it either. 215 is a shape that's been in the catalogue for a long time so it's no help when it comes to age.

There might be one thing to look at however: a couple of a guys on the forums reported seeing a letter stamped on the underside with brands Cadogan absorbed, sometimes on shapes that were easy to match to one manufacturer, but branded by another etc. Most didn't feature them before or used a different stamp/letter. This is perhaps a bit unrelated and wasn't a particularly interesting info for me at the time, but I did notice that I've never seen a letter stamped on the underside of a pre-merger Comoy's, save for a couple of NOS acrylic stem Straw Matts you sometimes see come up on Ebay or SP. Those to me seemed to be pretty close to 1980s, but you could tell the era on those by the three-piece logo on the stem. All other Comoy's with a stamped letter on the underside I could find at the time were Cadogan pipes (I remember one shared the letter with the Straw Matt, but had a stamped C on the stem instead of the three-piece). You don't mention such stamp, but it might be worth it looking into that. You can check if it has a letter stamp, or maybe even go the extra mile and see if you can find some Cadogan Comoy's (or even BBBs... etc.) that would share that letter.

If it's stamped with a letter on the underside (or somewhere near, since it's a bent), I'd say the pipe is post-merger.

Thanks for the information. 
I was wondering about whether they continued using 3-digit shape numbers after the merger as it really didn't make since unless they were trying to establish a distinction between pre and post era pipes. I seriously doubt that would have concerned them. 

There is the letter "V" on the bottom of the stem near the mortise. I have worked on a couple of other Comoy's with the random letter but have been unable to find any definitive information about what the significance of the letter are. One pipe had a W and another had a C.

The last Comoy's I have is also a Comoy's Castleton 215 without the random letter. It has a Perspex or clear acrylic stem with the brass rondel of the Comoy logo.

Hope it helped. What you can be sure about is that some 3-digit codes were still in use after the merger. That's clear. Can't be certain with the letters, because information is limited. You really got me interested in this so I did some extra searching just now. Best I can do is more conjecture. Again, thinking aloud.

It's obvious that some pipes were stamped with letters before Cadogan took over (e.g. the Straw Matts I mentioned). Now, I've no idea why they decided to start doing that, but I think it's safe to say that this only started as we're getting close to 1980s. There's so many shapes and letters that I couldn't possibly find good examples. We've no way to tell the years anyways.

So what we need here is something more standardized I think. Just remembered that Comoy's started doing a Christmas line in the 70s so I looked them up.

And lo and behold, my first hits are two 1978 Christmas Brandys (SP 1,2) stamped with "D", much like the Straw Matts I've seen. However, these do not have a three-part C on the stem. Jeez, thanks Comoy's. Talk about complicated!

The description reads: The Comoy Christmas pipe has a large and loyal following, and the estate market serves as the resource to expand your range of years, or fill in gaps. Interestingly this is one of the first Comoy's to feature the one part "C", the three part being dropped in late 1978.

Well, well, well. So it turns out the one part C was here before the merger. I can't really tell from the photos if it's done the same way like the indented post-merger stamp though. The 1978 dropping of the three-piece is new information to me and I don't know the source. Most other descriptions only mention pre-1980, but I've never seen an actual year.

A quick search seems to confirm what the SP guys are saying though. I've found two 1977 Christmas pipe listings (Ebay,Etsy):

• They have a three-piece "C" logo on the stem,
• They have no letter stamp.

Thanks. The Castleton is another one I've had no luck in finding information on. I've seen other Castleton's but either not this shape or with the clear stem. I take that back, I saw a 215 Castleton but the stem was black. Once again, none of my research has turned up anything as to where the Castleton stands in terms of quality or the production dates. Now, I'm trying to decide how much to sell it for.

As for the lettering on Comoy's, I'm beginning to think it may be something as simple as designating which factory worker finished the pipe. 

I should explain something about the pipes I'm working on. I've been purchasing estates and restoring them for about seven years. Most of these have been from antique junk shops or malls that the wife and I like to visit. I have bought five or six a year in the past. I restore them and occasionally write about them on my blog.

At the end of February, a woman contacted me and asked if I would take a look at the pipes her family inherited from her father-in-law. The two boxes held about 50 pipes and while there were the usual Kaywoodies, Medico, Dr. Grabows, there were also some higher quality pipes. She wanted to know if I could help her sell them. I was told I could keep three of them for myself. I found four Comoy's, five Charatan's Make, five Stanwell Danish Stars, a couple of Savinelli's and Ben Wades and several other interesting pipes. I kept two for myself so far, a Castello Sea Rock KKK and a Thomas Cristiano freehand. 

I clean and de-ghost each pipe and deoxidize and polish the vulcanite stems. I then place them on eBay or post them on a couple of the pipe forums for sale. 

I'm also taking the time to research each pipe as much as possible. 

Pretty good finds you kept for your trouble too. I appreciate you posting about this; while I enjoy the forum a lot, I miss some good pipe talk around here.

There's plenty of good pipes to be found from those times, but I do avoid blind buys of that era unless the price is very right (for English makers, that is). I also got a lot of pipes at prices so low I don't care what comes out of it. Those are for my tinkering though: the ones I smoke, especially those of higher value, I only ever bought from reputable sellers or friends.

I looked into the Castleton line and couldn't find much, like you. From the archives and available pics, it's most often seen with a three-piece C and perspex stem like yours. There are also some with a black stem, like you mentioned, again with a three-piece logo. Seen some modern pieces bearing the line name too, they obviously have nothing to do with this era of production, not NOS.

Unless there's a fault with the pipe itself, there's nothing to suggest it's not a decent pre-merger pipe. Based on the stem logo, you can safely market it as such and maybe it will catch a little bit more, especially if the finish is buffed to a nice shine. It's not a prime time piece though, it still would be in the under $100 area in my book, somewhere around 60-80 USD.