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9 photographsArchive Record FUH-NY4V-6J9G-T
mid-to-late 20th century, 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 sandblasted tobacco pipe from the Big Ben Ranger line, bearing the registration number 34468. The sandblasted finish, in which the softer grain of the bowl is blasted away to leave a textured relief surface, has been a staple treatment in factory pipe production since the early twentieth century; it lightens the pipe, improves grip, and reveals the underlying grain pattern in tactile form rather than through polish and stain.
Big Ben is among the best-known Dutch pipe marques, produced by the house of Elbert Gubbels & Sons of Roermond in the Netherlands, a firm whose roots reach back to the nineteenth century and which grew into one of continental Europe's principal volume pipe makers. The brand built its reputation on consistent factory production across a broad range of named lines, of which the Ranger is one, typically offered in classic shapes and workmanlike finishes aimed at the everyday smoker rather than the high-grade market.
Dating rests on the stampings the pipe carries: the Big Ben brand mark, the Ranger line name, and the registration number 34468. Registration numbers of this kind identify a registered design or model rather than a year of manufacture, and Big Ben, like most factory marques, did not employ a systematic factory date code on its stems or shanks. The number therefore anchors the pipe to a catalogued line but not to a specific production year. Taken together with its estate provenance, the pipe is most responsibly bracketed to the mid-to-late twentieth century, the period during which the Big Ben marque was in broad international distribution, with the precise year left undetermined. It stands in the archive as a representative example of Dutch factory pipe making and of the sandblasted finish as applied to a named production line.
2023-01-13
Logged from the Faridunhill archive — photographed and posted on Instagram, 2023-01-13.
2023-01-23
Sold through eBay for USD 71. No buyer is recorded.
2026-07-29
5 checklist facts recorded under Faridunhill's standing declaration of shop practice (2026-07-29).
This record is append-only. Nothing is deleted — a correction is a new entry that supersedes the old one, and both stay visible.
USD 71sold 2023-01-23 · 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 53 sales of Big Ben between 2015–2026 — median $60, most falling between $20 and $135.
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, 2023-01-13. 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.