At first I couldn’t decipher either the name stamped on the shank bottom or the logo on the stem, thinking it must be a mistake. But a little research revealed that the pipe maker was one David Wagner, an Austrian, and his brand name was Baff, which apparently means ‘astonished’ in colloquial German. And, the question mark on the stem is, indeed, the correct logo for this pipe and thus we have an original, brindle stem on this pipe, which is in excellent condition. It’s pretty close to near-new and I’m not sure that it isn’t unsmoked. The closest I can come to the pipe having had any intercourse with tobacco is a faint latakia smell in the bowl, but that can easily happen when a pipe is set in an environment that has such aromas, picking them up 2nd hand, so-to-speak. A contact high, as it were. There is certainly no indication of any leaf burning in the pristine chamber, the mortise or the stem, nor is there any chatter on the stem. The draw is wide-open, the pipe passes the cleaner test and the grain, under the sandblast, reveals a lot of straight grain. The negative part is that a young David Wagner died of cancer in his 50s and can no longer make pipes. What I did see was that when he was still making pipes, they were presented at about $750, so this one will be quite the bargain for someone who wants this piece of German/Austrian pipe history.
5.9” long, bowl 2.1” tall. Weight: 2 1/8 oz., 61 grams.