Peterson Supreme

Greetings, Kappnists!* For the past few years I’ve enjoyed beginning the new year with a look back at the previous year’s "Sweet Petes"—pipes that have come across my path in the course of research, conversation or acquisition. From the collector's point of view, one of the best-kept secrets about Peterson is just how much territory goes into this terrain. As the faux-scatterplot illustrates, there are not only six discreet eras of Peterson pipes, with peculiar idiosyncracies to each, but a wide spectrum of categories: rare shapes, English factory pipes, factory hand-mades, antiques, System lines and permutations, extreme high-grades, forgotten and undocumented lines, new / old stock and unsmoked pipes accompanied by their original ephemera of boxes, brochures, guarantees and even gratis pipe tools. While the book has been printed and is en route from Beijing to Hong Kong to Seattle, I’m finding that there remains a wealth of Peterson information to be recovered, discovered and shared, all of it outside the book's scope. Maybe Peterson Pipe Notes should be called The Peterson Arcana. Whatever it's called, I hope this will continue to be a good place to celebrate and promote one of the great marques of briar pipe history.  And in that spirit, what follows is a “scatterplot” of my 2018 Pete pilgrimage. As you’ll see, it’s not so much a mathematical diagram of Cartesian coordinates displaying value along two vectors—production eras and lines—as it is a look at what can be found when geeking out about “the world’s oldest briar-pipe making business in continuous production” —as my co-author and I were able to document in The Peterson Pipe. 1. Antique: 4s 1894 As the brand continues to gain interest among pipe smokers, I think we can expect not only to see estate prices rise, but see more old Petes recovered. The “Indiana Jones” of Peterson artifact research, for my money, is my co-author Gary Malmberg. He’s bringing several treasures unearthed since the 2018 Chicago show to the book launch in 2019, including the unsmoked 4s from 1894 seen above! And we’re negotiating with Peterson to bring a few treasures of their own, which should make this year's display of historic Petes the best ever seen in one place at one time.   2. Rare Shapes: Author 999 Tucked away in Steve Dundish’s massive 999 collection last year were two pipes I thought I’d never see, both specimens of what I’m fairly certain is the rarest of all production shapes, the 999 author. The shape was made during the early days of “the Emergency,” or what the rest of the world called WWII, probably around 1940 or so. Steve acquired both a Shamrock line version and the Captain Pete version pictured here. You’ll be able to take a closer look at the Captain Pete at the Chicago show in May.   3. New Lines: Dublin Edition (US-only) The Dublin Edition US-only line, in sandblast, rustic and smooth with vulcanite mouthpieces in saddle or taper and nickel bands, quietly slid onto…