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7 photographsArchive Record FUH-HTQ6-H3HC-2
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 Butz-Choquin Capitan 70 in a smooth brandy shape, carrying the maker's shape number 1632. It arrives to the archive as a French estate pipe, meaning it has passed through previous ownership and use before entering the record. Butz-Choquin stands among the most historically significant names in French pipe making. The marque later became rooted in Saint-Claude, the Jura town long regarded as the world capital of pipe manufacture, where it has operated under the Berrod-Regad family since the mid-twentieth century. Butz-Choquin's catalogue has always been organised around named series — of which the Capitan line is one — each pairing a house finish with a numbered range of classic and freehand shapes. The brandy is one of the enduring silhouettes of the classic shape chart: a rounded, bottom-heavy bowl that tapers gently inward toward the rim, recalling the profile of a brandy snifter. The smooth finish presented here leaves the surface of the stummel polished and undisguised, the treatment traditionally reserved for wood clean enough to show openly. Dating a Butz-Choquin presents a familiar challenge in French pipe scholarship: unlike some English and Danish houses, the firm has never employed a factory date-code system in its stamping. Attribution therefore proceeds from the series name and shape number, cross-referenced against period catalogues — a method that identifies the line with confidence but rarely narrows production to a specific year. The pipe stands in the encyclopedia as a documented instance of the Capitan 70 series and of the brandy form as executed in Saint-Claude.
2022-11-20
Logged from the Faridunhill archive — photographed and posted on Instagram, 2022-11-20.
2023-10-23
Sold through eBay for USD 45. 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 (2 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 45sold 2023-10-23 · 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 59 sales of Butz-Choquin between 2018–2026 — median $50, most falling between $33 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, 2022-11-20. 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. 7 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.