The joys and dangers of Ebay pipes

[WalesLax]

Funny enough, those Lawries were on my "watch" list. The low price actually made me a bit nervous.

I feel like there are three very distinct buyers of pipes on eBay - Scotland, Canada, and the US. Scotland seems to have a plethora of pipes, but they are overwhelmingly "average" pipes. People in the US are looking for pipes, but I get the sensation they are looking for something "special," which is why the plain sets and sets with Catalan mounts don't sell for a lot. I can't lie, I am definitely one of those Americans always on the lookout for an ivory set that doesn't have to cross borders, silver, and/or something rare/with a story. I think Canada sort of is a mix of those two, but I have noticed that there are a lot more non-eBay options in Canada than the US, primarily Kijiji. I come up every so often for work, piping, and curling, and I am am always amazed at how well my trips coincide with Kijiji going silent. ;)

Anyway, that's enough about me. Now back to waiting to see what exciting sets you unearth! (...and I absolutely will do the same when I come across some and/or have time to go through my list with questions for you)

Rob

[MichiganKyle]

This is a very helpful thread. I'm not in the market now, but it'll be good training for what to look for when I am.

[WalesLax]

I will throw this out here, as this listing contains a number of my pet-peeves of pipes on eBay: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Professiona....c100010.m2109

The things that annoy me / I look at as red-flags:
- seller does not say much about the pipes - I struggle to say 'not knowing anything about the pipes,' when this seller does reference where they were sold, but you would think they would share more if they knew more and really wanted to sell the item
- few pictures, pictures are from a distance, closeups are fuzzy/poor quality, and/or more pictures of the (usually worthless) accessories than of the pipes themselves
- use of the word "Professional" in describing the pipes. I kind of sometimes wish one of the well known pipe makers would release an "amateur bagpipes" set, perhaps for April Fools Day
- "sold as seen," especially when you haven't shown much at all
- "no refunds," which I have been told you would never hear from someone selling you a worthwhile set of pipes
- while not explicitly stated in this auction, in general, the selling of "vintage" pipes, when the pipes either aren't that old or don't have anything special/unique about them. Old and 'vintage' don't really mean a ton with bagpipes if they aren't made well. What drove me to include this on this set is the fact that when I check the referenced seller, Sterling Bagpipes, I see that you can buy new pipes from them for roughly what this seller is asking, if not more. If the pipes had something unique or were a particularly desired maker and/or vintage, that makes sense, but for what appears to be a very 'average' set at best, doing so seems unrealistic at best.

I am looking forward to hearing all of the assessment mistakes that I assuredly made!

Rob

[OC Richard]

I will throw this out here, as this listing contains a number of my pet-peeves of pipes on eBay: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Professiona....c100010.m2109

The things that annoy me / I look at as red-flags:
- seller does not say much about the pipes
- few pictures, pictures are from a distance, closeups are fuzzy/poor quality
- use of the word "Professional" in describing the pipes
- "sold as seen," especially when you haven't shown much at all
- "no refunds"

Exactly right on every point!

And his listing originally was even worse, it had one blurry far-away photo and the only description was "sold as seen". What?!

I messaged him right away saying that if he wanted to increase the chance of his pipes selling he would either have to have more photos, or more description, or better yet both. I asked him if he knew who made the pipes.

He said "it's in the listing".

I said that in fact his listing did not say anything about who made the pipes, and I asked him again.

He repeated "it's in the listing".

This time I copied and pasted the listing, and finally he became aware that he hadn't mentioned the maker.

He updated the listing with the maker mentioned and a couple more photos, but still I doubt that he will sell that set at that price.

I'd never heard of Stirling Bagpipes, but if it's true that the maker apprenticed under Nigel Richard (who recently passed away) then he should know what he's about.

https://www.stirlingbagpipes.com/about

[OC Richard]

I feel like there are three very distinct buyers of pipes on eBay:

Scotland seems to have a plethora of pipes, but they are overwhelmingly "average" pipes.

People in the US are looking for pipes, but I get the sense that they are looking for something "special," which is why the plain sets and sets with Catalan mounts don't sell for a lot. I can't lie, I am definitely one of those Americans always on the lookout for an ivory set that doesn't have to cross borders, silver, and/or something rare/with a story.

Canada sort of is a mix of those two, but I have noticed that there are a lot more non-eBay options in Canada than the US, primarily Kijiji.

Very interesting! I never noticed that, I will have to keep an eye out.

I could be wrong, but it seems to me one difference between US pipers and UK pipers is regarding the "restoring" of vintage pipes. From what I've seen there's a greater tendency in the UK for pipers to like shiny new-looking pipes, and they would rather have a vintage set "restored" to make look new, while many US pipers don't mind vintage pipes looking their age. (I know there's both kinds of pipers in both places.)

There used to be a guy named Steve McVeigh (Ebay name "bugpiper") in Northern Ireland who was, to my way of thinking, criminal in what he did to vintage pipes. I don't think he did the work himself, I think he sent the old pipes to Kintail. He would have them turn down the ivory mounts to get rid of the patina layer, and have them turn down all the wood parts to cut away the original combing & beading and cut new combing & beading.

Even worse is how he would slap on hideous CNC engraved silver mounts.

I don't know how many beautiful old Hendersons he desecrated in that way.

About the "stories" that come with pipes, I think generally those are bogus. I've seen so many pipes on Ebay said to have been "recovered from a WWI battlefield" that after the Great War the ground must have been so covered with bagpipes that you couldn't walk without stepping on them.

Oh, and pipes "played in the Boar War" (sic)

[WalesLax]

About the "stories" that come with pipes, I think generally those are bogus. I've seen so many pipes on Ebay said to have been "recovered from a WWI battlefield" that after the Great War the ground must have been so covered with bagpipes that you couldn't walk without stepping on them.

Oh, and pipes "played in the Boar War" (sic)

I 100% get your point that it is difficult to believe, verify, or care about the backstory, but I enjoy hearing/reading them.

I can not find either right now, but my two favorite stories were 1) a set of pipes played in a Bollywood movie, and 2) a set of pipes signed and once played by Roddy Roddy Piper, the wrestler.

A long, long time ago, I was studying US Civil War research, and one of the professors or speaker said shared the fact that they had documented more unique battlefield-used swords in museums or for sale (over some specific time period) than the number of swords that were issued by both sides combined. I can imagine it now - "thank you for volunteering.... listen, we don't have shoes to issue you right now, but why don't you go ahead and take two swords and a set of bagpipes; that should be just as good!"

Rob

[OC Richard]

When you really have a laugh is when there's some elaborate story about the pipes being recovered from the battlefield, or being "bequeathed" to somebody by "the last surviving veteran" and the pipes are entirely modern sheesham-wood Pakistani pipes!

About movie-used props and costumes, I personally would be skeptical, because those claims are usually impossible to verify.

So in the Smithsonian Museum they have "the Indiana Jones hat which was seen in _________ film". Was it?

Because there never was "the hat". On the set in the costumer would have on hand probably at least a half-dozen identical hats, for a big-budget film perhaps a dozen or more. If the hat needs to be weathered, dusty, torn, etc all of the hats on hand would have identical weathering and damage. For a particular shot the costumer would grab a hat and hand it to Harrison Ford, or his stunt double, or a stand-in if he has one. (These might all be in different sizes to fit the various men.) After the film is finished there's no way to know which hats were never used, which hats were used in shots that ended up on the cutting-room floor, and which hats were used in shots that made it to the final edit of the film.

In this particular case fans have gone through the Indiana Jones films shot-by-shot and identified certain specific hats based on some quirk an individual hat possessed. (The same scene is made up of numerous shots and it might be different hats in the different shots, no one can say because they don't keep track of that stuff.)

However in the Bollywood case there might not be budget for "multiples" of props and costumes. I would still want to see a nice clear screen shot of the pipes, to perhaps determine if the purported screen-used pipes look the part.

Anyhow back to Ebay! This seller is calling these pipes "unbranded". They look like they might be older Gibsons to me, when Gibson used nylon for the mounts. Jerry told me that he got a lot of complaints about the appearance of the nylon, which Jerry used because it's very tough stuff. So later he switched to the imitation ivory that the UK makers were using, which looks more like ivory but is quite brittle.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Highland-ba...MAAOSwRUpgEcVX

It's odd how often sellers will have a good number of photos, but all of them taken from exactly the same angle! So the photos are redundant, one would have done. What buyers want are multiple angles so they can attempt to identify the pipes. This is especially true with Gibson drones due to the projecting mounts having a unique profile, but you have to be able to see the drones side-on to tell.

Most sellers just look at the stamp on the chanter, the trouble is that in many (if not most) cases the chanter in a set of pipes is a different maker from the rest of the set. This leads to half the pipes on Ebay being misidentified.

One aspect to this is how often Pakistani pipes happen to have a legitimate UK-made or North American-made pipe chanter in them, the seller then listing the entire set as being made by that UK or NA maker.

Many of the old makers, and some of the new makers, don't stamp their drones. When makers do stamp their drones, the stamp is usually hidden in the "cord guide". Of course an Ebay seller who doesn't know much about pipes has no idea that the maker's stamp will be concealed in this way, so I will message the seller and try to explain how to find the stamps.

Here's the RG Hardie stamp in the cord guide of a vintage Hardie drone. You can see how the cord has to be pulled away from its usual place sitting in the guide, to see the stamp.

[OC Richard]

Here are 2004 Kintails, a big chip in one of the mounts, here in the USA under $800 including shipping.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/2004-Kintai...wAAOSwJX5f9Lk5

What concerns me a bit, in addition to the chip in the mount, is that I don't know how Kintails of that period sound and play.

I'm familiar with 1980s Kintails, because my Pipe Major plays a mid-1980s silver & ivory Kintail which has an amazing tone with a powerful bass. His backup set is a Catalin-mounted Kintail also from the mid-1980s which he picked up cheap on Ebay, and which sounds exactly the same as his silver & ivory Kintails.

But I haven't knowingly heard a Kintail from the 2000s.

This next bagpipe listing is a head-scratcher with several red flags, one being the seller has zero feedback, the other that the seller obviously knows nothing about bagpipes because 1) his description has bagpipe parts misspelled and 2) his description doesn't match the bagpipe seen in the photos.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/RG-Hardie-N...4AAOSwOCRgHFct

So he says "plain combined" when he means is "plain combed". The combing on bagpipes (combing like combing your hair) is the pattern of tiny grooves, called combing because it's done with a tool that resembles a comb.

Thing is, the bagpipes in the photos aren't plain combed, they're "fully combed and beaded" (a bead being between two areas of combing).

Then he says the pipes have "beaded nickle furnels" when he means "beaded nickel ferrules".

But the bagpipes in the photos have non-beaded or un-beaded ferrules.

Another thing is that he states the bagpipes are African blackwood but from the nice closeup photos (for which I'm grateful) the pipes look like they're made from polypenco/delrin rather than wood.

Speaking of head-scratchers, here's a Pakistani bagpipe where the seller knows it's a Pakistani bagpipe and yet has them priced absurdly high

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Pak...gAAOSwwfdfohHi

Several years ago I got a catalogue from a Pakistani pipemaker, that kind of bagpipe is the least expensive one they make, they called it "cheap quality" and they were $40.

Something to keep in mind when people play hundreds of dollars for a Pakistani bagpipe!

[TheeBooch]

well posted, good sir. Ive been simmering on which pipes to buy and this information is as good a gold.

I had an inkling a lot of the pipes on Ebay are waaaay over priced. Ill hunt for something good in the meantime. Patiences is seldom not rewarded.

[OC Richard]

This is one of those Ebay listings that quite possibly could be a wonderful vintage set!!

But with blurry photos and a description by somebody who obviously knows nothing about bagpipes, it's also possible that it's not what it seems.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/15470580496...gAAOSwXtthlWyx

First, L&M doesn't make bagpipes. They're a leather firm, who only made the bag. Happily L&M bags are dated so we see 1998 I think, dating when those pipes were being played. Those bags last forever so the pipes might have been played up until recently with that bag.

The projecting mounts on the bagpipes appear to be that-substance-which-must-not-be-named which in itself suggests, but doesn't prove, that the pipes aren't Pakistani. They made, and probably still make, plenty of **** mounted bagpipes in Sialkot, it's just that they don't make it over here to the USA very often, for obvious reasons.

Even if the set is a legitimate quality UK-made instrument (which I think it is) there's nothing to tell us whether it's a fullsize set or a 7/8 size set (which from c1830 to c1940 were called "halfsize" pipes by the Scottish makers, and what we mistakenly call "three-quarter size" pipes today).

In any case I've asked the seller for better photos, and for him/her to peek under the cords and look for a maker's stamp. Also to see if the pipe chanter is stamped.

The W Ross stamp is, I'm fairly certain, on the Practice Chanter. As usual the seller doesn't realise that the bagpipe and the PC are separate instruments. That PC itself is worth a few hundred dollars, I would think.