Christmas Pipe 2010 County (4104) (42 of 300) Tobacco Pipe

This limited edition Dunhill "Ghost of Christmas Future" features what is, suffice to say, one superbly fine presentation. The sturdy wooden box is bound in supple red leather to simulate a high-end edition of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, while inside it features a mix of leather and soft, forest-green velvet throughout. The briar itself is an appropriately lean and angular, canted bulldog (the Ghost of Christmas Future was after all a skeletal figure) fitted with a handsome sterling silver mount and delicately-shaped cumberland bit. A fold-out panel in the box's lid holds the set's certificate of authenticity, while bound next to the pipe by a small elastic loop is a solid silver tamper cast into the likeness the gaunt and enigmatic Ghost himself. which, I will confess, when I first opened the box without reading its "cover", I initially mistook for an extremely unorthodox, and more than a little bemusing depiction of the Virgin Mary.

- Eric N. Squires