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9 photographsArchive Record FUH-ER9D-5DY2-Q
Era undetermined
Reference example
This pipe is documented here as an example for study — it is a record in the archive, not an item offered for sale. Everything below is what the piece itself, and the evidence around it, will honestly support.
Original stem
Yes
Faridunhill standing declaration
Stem replaced or re-cut
No
Faridunhill standing declaration
Rim cleaned (no wood removed)
Yes
Faridunhill standing declaration
Refinished
No
Faridunhill standing declaration
Chamber reamed
Yes
Faridunhill standing declaration
Smoked
Yes
owner stated
Facts, not a grade. We do not score a pipe out of ten: a number would rank a restored pipe above an honest one, and restoration is exactly what this hobby prices down. Every line above is checkable by anyone holding the pipe. Lines marked Faridunhill standing declaration rest on our published, dated statement of shop practice (v1.0, 2026-07-29) — not on an inspection of this individual pipe. It is one document, in public, that you can hold us to.
This reference example is a Hardcastle Diplomate in the maker's Special Quality line, carrying the shape number 140 and presented in a smooth finish. The Diplomate belongs to the family of low-slung, oval-shanked designs descended from the classic Diplomat pattern: a squat, rounded bowl set on a flattened oval shank, a silhouette prized for sitting comfortably in the hand and for its compact, pocketable proportions. The smooth treatment leaves the 's surface fully visible, the standard presentation for Hardcastle's named quality lines. Hardcastle occupies a notable position in London pipe history. Lines such as Special Quality represented the marque's graded offerings, with the designation and shape number stamped on the shank in the conventional English manner. Dating a Hardcastle presents the difficulty common to most English makers outside Dunhill itself: the factory applied no year code to its pipes. Attribution of era therefore depends on the style of the nomenclature, the line name in use, and the general character of the stamping — evidence that narrows a piece to a production period rather than a year. On the strength of the Special Quality designation and the numbered Diplomate shape, this example is bracketed honestly to twentieth-century English production, its more precise decade left open. It stands in the archive as a representative document of Hardcastle's graded smooth work within the London pipe trade.
2023-02-02
Logged from the Faridunhill archive — photographed and posted on Instagram, 2023-02-02.
2023-02-10
Sold through eBay for USD 67. No buyer is recorded.
2026-07-29
5 checklist facts recorded under Faridunhill's standing declaration of shop practice (2026-07-29).
2026-08-28
Honesty pass: statements the source does not support were removed (era '20th century, undetermined' -> undetermined; 3 unsupported/absence sentence(s) removed from the essay).
2026-08-28
Honesty pass: statements the source does not support were removed (1 unsupported/absence sentence(s) removed from the essay).
This record is append-only. Nothing is deleted — a correction is a new entry that supersedes the old one, and both stay visible.
USD 67sold 2023-02-10 · eBay
From 1 recorded sale — this pipe, this day. A single transaction is not a market price, and we will never print one as if it were.
The sample this sits in: Faridunhill has recorded 20 sales of Hardcastle between 2017–2026 — median $57, most falling between $29 and $115.
The date shown is the date of sale, not the date this page was published. Our own transaction record, published free. No buyer appears here — not a name, not initials, not a country. Counted across both of our channels — eBay 2015–2022 and Etsy 2022–2026 — so the series is continuous and a change of marketplace is never read as a change in price.
Nobody leaves empty-handed. If you hold the catalogue page, the dated advertisement, or a hallmarked sibling that closes one of these — or simply own this model and can measure yours — send it in. Contributions are checked, credited to you by name, and the record is updated with the date it changed.
Instagram post, 2023-02-02. Published to a third-party platform on that date and archived since — a timestamp we cannot move. It is evidence that this object existed and looked like this, then.
The photographs are the identity. 9 images of this pipe's grain, stamping and stem are held as its fingerprint. The handle above is only a handle: lose it, and the pipe can still be matched back to this record from its grain.