Next year you should drive south and hit the Chicago Pipe Show. I get my best deals at the Richmond and DC pipe shows. At the shows is one of the few times that us regular folk get to buy at a STEEP discount.

What's really cool is that I'm something of a local celebrity at these two shows. Everyone knows who I am even if we've never met before because they've heard about the disabled 9-11 firefighter who always comes in a kilt!

Most of the pipe carvers and distributors there just love that I'm kilted and I get even bigger discounts than most folk. There are definitely benefits to being kilted. At the last Richmond show I was given some free Scottish Blend tobacco by a vendor because he liked the kilt so much.

One of my favorite online vendors is Maxim Engel over at http://www.pipes2smoke.com/ and he attends all of the shows. He has a great variety of pipes at really good prices (made even better by his location in Canada and the still slightly favorable exchange rate, although it has worsened of late for US). If you visit his site or call him up, tell him that Phil McKee the kilted guy from DC sent you over there. I'm sure he'll cut you a great deal. He's also really big on customer service. I liked one of the pipes that he designed and had SJ make for his shop. I told him the style I liked and he hand picked one that he knew would meet my tastes right down to the ring grain on the sandblasting and the color of the stain.