About PCCA
PCCA is owned and operated by Robert C Hamlin as his company. Having worked in the Pipe and Tobacco business for over 33 years and having founded PCCA, "Bob" has traveled extensively to visit pipe makers over seas, visited factories, toured tobacco operations and attended well over 100 Pipe shows. Over the course of 2007-08 Bob hopes to be writing a history of his 33+ years in the pipe trade and hobby. This article can be found on pipeguy.com with chapters added as they are written.
The Pipe Collectors Club of America, better known as PCCA, was started in 1984 as a way to interact with the hobby by offering information in a 32 page printed newsletter called The Smokers Pipeline. In addition to the newsletter, PCCA would offer high grade products, mainly pipes, at club discounted prices and make available a selection of products well beyond that offered by retail stores or most online vendors.
PCCA was conceived in 1984 as a way to share information and offer the best products. Today, 2006 as this is being written, PCCA offers two sites, one exclusively for information and the other dedicated to quality products for sale.
Pipeguy.net will be exclusively products for sale and will be responsible for paying for the cost of both sites. Other than just being the source of income for PCCA's ongoing operations, we want to go back to our original concept with the products we offer through PCCA, that being not the ordinary everyday product lines offered by everyone.
Rare, unusual, hard to find well graded pipes are what make up the greater basis for pipe collecting. While its impossible to chase the current trend or fad, without going broken adding yesterday's trend to our inventory, it is possible to offer established lines of high quality along with a selection of shapes, grades and price points. This second point, established product lines, we believe offers true value to those products we will carry, tested timeless value in new products and also on the estate market.
Pipeguy.com will only be used for information and articles contributed by those that I consider much smarter than me. Experience, first hand knowledge and history are somewhat elusive on the net today., This is not to say there is not a lot of information published, there is, just that much of what you see written on the net is marketing, conjecture and theory rather than fact.
Fall 2006 saw the introduction of a new and improved PCCA, both with our information only site pipeguy.com and with the product site pipeguy.net. We hope that you'll find we offer great products at prices that offer value and that you will enjoy and share in the knowledge of experienced pipe hobby personalities through their columns. Thank you for visiting our sites, we hope you enjoy what we have to offer on both PCCA sites.
PCCA is a fully licensed Virginia company including business license, Sales Tax License and Virginia OTP tobacco distribution license.
If you would like to be included in irregular email notices, updates, specials and inventory status please send me an email with as request to be added to our mailing list. Our Opt-In list will remain private for PCCA use only. Please note that we will not respond to unsigned email or to anti-spam corrupted return email addresses.
We hate spam as much as anyone, however if you make me jump through hoops to get to you through anti-spam traps and plans, the result is going to be a "delete" of our attempted response. In other words, if you write me, then block me by making me jump through hoops to get to you, don't expect a reply.
