Is older better?

(G. L. Pease) When I first took up the pipe, and more specifically, the pernicious disorder known as pipe-collecting, I was counseled by a couple grizzled old guys, meaning they were then older then than I am now, that pipes were better back in the day.
They patiently explained to me, the wide-eyed, enthusiastic youth, that in the old days, good pipes were made from prehistoric briar, constructed by craftsmen who began their apprenticeships in utero, and that modern pipes are no more worthy of their attention than a Starving Artist's rendition of Cézanne's Man With a Pipe bought out of the trunk of a beat-up Chevy in a Home Depot parking lot.
They'd contentedly puff away at their ancient briars as they would tell me of the good old days, and how it's too bad pipe smoking was a dying art, and that pipe making, real pipe making, was already dead, and just hadn't had the grace to get buried yet, and how it was too bad that I'd missed out on the Golden Age. Continued