Sell Vintage Collectable Pipes on eBay

Collectable pipes are also commonly found at local auctions from country and deceased estates and, like ashtrays, they were often given as gifts or special awards and more often kept and cherished than used or discarded.

Pipes were made from many different materials, some short lived and easily broken and made from inferior clay, or expensively fashioned from ivory or rare woods and embellished with silver and porcelain. The latter represent the highest profit potential.

Carved wood and ivory bowls fetch the highest prices especially with famous faces (a bowl with portrait of Napoleon fetched £400 at a sale in Newcastle last month), and most highly valued of all are long stemmed pipes, up to fifteen or sixteen inches long with ornate carved bowls sometimes embellished with silver and precious gems.

eBay.com's recent high prices include:

* $3075.00 was paid for a Lars Ivarsson Pipe

* A large Dunhill pipe fetched $1875.00

* A Dunhill White Spot Briar Pipe and Case fetched $954.81

* An Ivarsson Pipe, Pot with Bamboo, made $860.00

* A Meerschaum pipe carved with face of a mountain man made $661.00

I won't go further because in just a few minutes I spotted the following trends:

* Pipes represent one of those collectables that fetch high prices and rarely go unsold on eBay.

* Names like Dunhill and Ivarsson are amongst the highest achievers of all on ebay.com and other ebay sites.

Meerschaum pipes are also extremely collectable, meerschaum being the material from which the pipes are made. Meerschaum is better known as magnesium silicate, a porous mineral found in rock veins.

Pipes made from meerschaum absorb nicotine and gradually grow darker. The better types are elaborately carved to represent people or animals. The more intricate the design, the higher the price is likely to be, such as a pipe depicting an elephant's head with long winding trunk and tusks that several years ago fetched £1,000 at Christie's in the UK, and a cheroot holder (not exactly a pipe) in the shape of two ladies sitting on a snake that fetched almost fifteen hundred pounds at Sotheby's.

Avril Harper is a business writer and eBay PowerSeller who has produced several guides to making money from eBay, including MAKE MONEY TEARING UP OLD BOOKS AND MAGAZINES AND SELLING THEM ON EBAY which you can read about at:http://www.magstoriches.com 103 POWERSELLER TIPS can be downloaded with other freely distributable reports and eBooks at http://www.avrilharper.com