"Do you aspire to own a Bo Nordh pipe?"
Friday, February 24, 2012 at 9:15AM | Neill Archer Roan | Permalink tagged Bo Norch Pipes | in Collecting, Opinion 
“Do you aspire to own a Bo Nordh pipe?” This question was posed as a thread title on one of the forums to which I belong. The thread prompted an interesting sequence of opinions and observations that were predictably mixed. My own response was one of them.
A Geiger rendition of a Bo Nordh bulldog shape in my collection.As I’ve followed that thread, and thought about the opinions expressed within it, I’ve had a few thoughts I thought I would share here. I do so with some hesitation because when I break with conventional wisdom, I find that people put words in my mouth and impute opinions to me that are out and out wrong. As a somewhat careful writer who tries to express myself precisely, I always hope that readers take me at my word and don’t assume I have some secondary agenda or that I mean more or less than I am expressing.
Do I aspire to own a Bo Nordh pipe? No, I do not.
I want to make myself clear; I’m answering the question asked. For me, aspiration is something I take seriously. When I aspire to something, I don’t wish. I don’t think “that would be nice.” When I aspire to something, I make a commitment to myself to work towards making my aspiration real, to overcome the barriers to realization.
By saying that I don’t aspire to own a Nordh, I am not indicating that Bo Nordh pipes are not great pipes. I believe that some are and some aren’t.
I am not indicating that I haven’t seen Bo Nordh pipes that I would love to own. Quite the opposite is true; I am especially fond of his classic shapes, his bulldog, and his sphinx. I find these pipes exquisite objects. His best versions of his signature shapes are extraordinary renditions from an extraordinary imagination.
Nordh pipes are extremely expensive. Some of his pipes sell for US$25,000 and more. I have no real idea what the real range is, but at even a third of the high range, their sales price is beyond what I think of as my “willingness threshold.”
The resources I devote to this hobby are significant. The money I spend on pipes and tobaccos is, in honest terms, a purely selfish expenditure. Aside from the fact that I derive joy and entertainment from the hobby, my wife derives no value at all from what she experiences as “a black hole.” The joy is mine alone, and what I have already spent on this hobby frequently tests her patience and understanding.
This is not a question of whether or not I can find the money to buy a Bo Nordh pipe. The money is there, but for me the value isn’t. By the way, I’m not suggesting that the value isn’t there for others. We each have to appraise this for ourselves.
Were I to take $15,000 to $25,000 from our resources to buy a Bo Nordh pipe, it would hurt my wife. She would lose respect for me that I doubt I could get back - ever. I know myself well enough to know that, were I to buy a Nordh pipe, I couldn’t tell her about it. Worse, I would probably try to conceal the purchase because I know exactly how she would react. So, doing so would turn me into someone undeserving of her respect and love. Almost all of you have never met my wife – and never will – but I can tell you this, the fact that she respects and loves me is worth more to me than anything else I could conceive of owning or accomplishing.
Could I imagine buying a Bo Nordh pipe if I were single? Or if I were married to someone who wouldn’t object? Maybe. I hope I never find out. Clearly, the choices I’ve made indicate that I want to be married to the kind of woman who would object. A former friend of mine once told me that I use Wendy as a foil for my real values. That may be true. I’ve chosen to put money toward supporting and helping family members over making my pipe rack population Olympian. There are several Bo Nordh pipes represented by that choice.
I know that there are a few people in this hobby who have so much money that, for them, the price of a Bo Nordh is chump change. It’s a rounding number for them. To many, but not all, of these people, the purchase represents no sacrifice at all. Maybe I’m different, but I tend to value things for which I have to sacrifice and work. I have a lot of respect for money. It has been hard for me to come by what little I have managed to earn.
I have always valued limits. I think most of us know that anybody with unlimited resources can put together an impressive collection of pipes. The collectors I respect most in this hobby are those who make great collections with limited resources. I respect those whose taste, savvy, knowledge, and patience have fueled their enterprise. These are my heroes.
When I think about what I aspire to, it is to populate my racks with pipes that are not out of my class. The truth is that I’m just not in Bo Nordh’s class. I’m glad that there are collectors out there who are, who have the resources or willingness to sacrifice to make a Nordh collection happen. We all benefit from that.
Reader Comments (13)
Very well written my friend. The word aspire means the same to me as it does you. Would I like to own a Bo...sure. Do I aspire to...nope.
On a different note, I'm assuming that is your lovely wife in the photo, Neill. You're a lucky man (but I don't need to tell you that).
That's because the vast majority of the Nordh pipes that I own cost me less money than many relatively new pipe makers charge today.
Now that is a point worth considering: the collectors who bought Bo Nordh pipes can make enormous profits off them, while the collectors who paid $1,500-2,000 for newer pipe makers' work can hardly ever get their money back.
But $25,000 for a pipe? To me, that seems insanely high.
I have actually turned down that amount for a Bo Nordh pipe that I bought for $1,200. Part of the reason I rejected the offer was out of respect for Bo. If he were still alive, I might have told him about the offer and then sent the majority of profits to him. But since he was deceased, I thought the best course of action was to do nothing.
Will the prices continue to climb or will they collapse?
Your guess is as good as mine.
If his pipes represent great art, then don't be surprised if we see the prices continue to climb, and there might even be a day when we talk about a million-dollar pipe sale.
But if I had my way, the prices would collapse so that a great many more pipe smokers could have them.
Of course you have your head on straight when the issue is framed as a choice between a pipe -- any pipe -- and a happy marriage.
To those who can afford it, I get great joy from looking at your collection(s). I admire what you have built. I will never envy you, but simply join you and smile when I see pictures and thank you for sharing what you have managed to put together.
Thanks.
Pipes are tools used for smoking tobacco. I like having nice things, and that includes my pipes. However, if I was going to start collecting art, I could do better than a pipe with my $25k. No, not even if I won the lottery. There is a line in the sand between extravagant indulgence and sinful excess, and any pipe that exceeds $5k crosses that line.
While he was a wonderful person, he also had a colossal ego, which is partly what drove his perfectionism.
Bo was reminiscent of the old-time celebrities who said, "I don't care what you say about me as long as you spell my name right." It was not unusual for him to count the number of times he was mentioned in a pipe publication, and the more the better!
Since his death, we have heard that his pipes are not beautiful, that they have fills, that they are not good smokers, and a dozen other derogatory comments, and it seems the more he is attacked, the more in demand his pipes have become. So maybe Bo was on to something about all publicity -- positive AND negative -- being a good thing.
As for prices above a certain point -- let's use cakeanddottle's $5k -- we are talking about art, as opposed to functional art; meaning, those prices are to buy art objects for display and possible re-sale at a profit, as opposed to pipes for smoking.
I bought a bunch of Bo's pipes when they were in the $800 - 2k range primarily because they were such great smokers for me. Thank God I did not have Bill Brooks' experience, because if I had, I never would have kept buying them.
Ben Harrison's comment about having to save for three years to buy a Bo Nordh calabash for $4k was interesting, and he was speaking for many of us. But imagine if Ben had bought the pipe, enjoyed it for three years and then re-sold it? He could have gotten such a high price that the profit from that one Bo Nordh pipe could have been used to amass a fantastic collection for Ben for years and years!
Obviously that would have been highly speculative and, frankly, contrary to what pipe collecting should be. And who knew that the prices for Bo's pipes would continue soaring into the stratosphere? I certainly did not, and I probably would not have paid $4k either.
The real issue here is that a new breed of pipe collector has emerged in the last few years. His primary goal is to acquire objects of art, as opposed to pipes for smoking, and I respect and admire that perspective, though I don't share it in my own collecting interests.
But this is the reason that the prices for Bo Nordh pipes are so high. It is even possible that years from now we will look at $25k as having been a bargain price. But remember, this is not within the pipe collecting world as we know it. This is in the art collecting world.
As a pedantic fellow, I find the fact that this word has become a mental quagmire fascinating. I looked up the definition of the word, along with synonyms, just to make sure that I was not misunderstanding the word. According to the definition that I found, it simply means "to seek to attain or accomplish" something. Some synonyms included "hope", "desire", and "yearn". With these in mind, I think that a lot of people have answered "yes" in their subtext whilst simultaneously stating "no" outright.
Many have expressed a desire to own a Bo Nordh pipe, while not wanting to pay the current asking price. The two are not mutually exclusive. You can aspire to own a Nordh pipe while not wanting to pay the current price.
Neill stated that, in his mind, aspiration involves *actively* working towards something. While this is not in the definition of the word, I respect his view. However, I think everyone who works for a living is actively working towards that goal in some way.
Run with me here: We work to earn money; we earn money to use it for a number of things. I am sure a lot of people work towards getting raises and increasing their pay-scale, either through impressive your boss or increasing your business's income. The more money you earn, the lower percent of your yearly salary $25,000 becomes. Thus, logically, you are actively working towards the price of a Nordh pipe not looking like as much of your yearly salary as it currently is. Will it ever actually happen? Maybe. Maybe not. However, that does not mean you are not aspiring to it. You can aspire to something and simultaneously realize that it is unlikely, semantically speaking, of course.
Anyway, that's my one cent!
Cheers,
Ethan