Ivory ban

oneshotwiss said:

Is it just me or does the upcoming ivory ban in California blow? There are a lot of well established as well as amazing up and coming cue makers in Cali. What do you suppose their material of choice will be to replace ivory? Will they turn to phenolic, juma, elforyn?

Click to expand...

They can move

There should be a worldwide ban on ivory trading in my view, it's abhorrent and cuesports' historical role in the slaughter of such magnificent creatures truly shameful.

oneshotwiss........if you search my threads & posts over the last year, I have raised this topic for discussion numerous times and the bottom-line is.....It is what it is......there is a lawsuit initiated in CA challenging this new law but I don;t hold out much hope.


I am fighting this issue through my local Assemblyman. In America, there are no ex post facto laws and our laws are enacted on a de facto basis. I want to order another cue from a select cue-maker but obviousy he cannot complete the cue in a couple of months and the cue-maker has a waiting list and the law takes effect July 1, 2016.

It is my contention that the date of the contract takes precedent since a legal obligation is created to pay for the item when completed or delivered. If my down-payment and order reaches the cue-maker before June 30, 2016, that cue should be exempt from the new CA ivory ban. If I paid for the cue in full before the ban, it would definitely be exempt the way the laws are enacted under the US Constitution. I submit that the contarct itself is the governing instrument and a cue order with a substantial down-payment.....say $3k since the cue would be costing me between $6k-$8k, that contract is as binding and valid as if I paid for the cue in full. As such, it is a de facto contract and should be exempt from the CA ban.

CA Fish & Wildlife does not agree and the ruling is anything shipped or sold after July 1, 2016 that is shipped into or out of California violates the law and will be prosecuted if detected. The one thing for sure is even if the fines were waved for a first time offense for the cue buyer, the cue-maker will get hammered hard and the cue is permanently confiscated.......so you are out that money too.

Everyone says don't worry....how would you ever get caught. There's not ivory cops out there opening parcels looking for ivory. In life, in case you hadn't noticed, things can happen for a variety of unexpected factors......sometimes just a collision of different circumstances. So if you shipment was ever detected, you will need an attorney, be prepared to pay fines and kiss your cue goodbye. It will be a financial disaster and it is just not worth it. The CA ban says you cannot do business inside California so if I want another cue, or wish to sell any of mine, I must be physically outside of CA, ex., at a cue show in another state, and I can buy and sell as much as I want but not while I am physically in CA. The possession of ivory is not against any law in the USA but there are locales where it cannot be sold.......CA, NJ, NY & Oregon is pending.


Just some FYI........why they don't just tax the sale of legal ivory since there are tons and tons of it already here pre-dating the enactment of any ivory bans? Use the proceeds for wildlife preservation programs? What about mammoth tusks? That's ivory but it's also banned as ivory as well. The law does not contemplate....does not distinguish.....that there has been ivory here in the USA way before any environmentalist ever noticed that the elephant population was shrinking....there is legal ivory here in America......and to quarrel or debate with that fact is the same as insisting that climate change isn't really happening because of carbon emissions.

When you encounter folks who are so aberrant minded and immune to actual hard core facts, just move on because it is a futile discussion......All the ivory in my pool cues is legally here in the USA from "very very old" dead elephants that died a long, long time ago and IMO....there is no equivalent substitute for ivory which is why my cues use for ferrules and joints.The inlays don't have to be ivory but since the ivory is legal and already being used for my cues' ferrules, joints & some butt caps, it makes sense to use ivory inlays as well........it adds a little more value to the cue.......and looks better than juma or anything else too.


The final outcome is for opponents of using ivory in pool cues is CA does not allow any type or amount of ivory to be sold after June 30. 2016. So they should be delighted and other states are emulating the ban on ivory so stay alert.......but the law is being challenged in CA and I am following the topic very closely for selfish reasons. Meanwhile, I can't wait to see how a cue underway turns out....it uses a lot of ivory as you can tell from the below photo and it doesn't include the ivory butt cap on my cue. Anyway, all of the ivory used by my cue-makers comes from accredited, licensed sources for legal, pre-ban ivory.


Matt B.

Pete Tonkin has quit using ivory in his cues. Is anyone going to say that his cues look like shit now because he's using an ivory substitute in them?

The pro-ivory guys are always going to shift the discussion to things like "it's all China's fault" or "cues use such a small amount of ivory compared to other things" or "let's talk about deforestation and climate change instead."

The anti-ivory guys are just going to use the same argument that "it's a living creature that's disappearing because of two pointy things on it's face that people have assigned value to" and "there are plenty of alternatives that will do the same job."

And neither side is going to consider the other.

Shit I have a cue with ivory on it and I'm flying to California with it, am I going to have issues

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G890A using Tapatalk

oneshotwiss said:

What do you suppose their material of choice will be to replace ivory?

Click to expand...

Integrity......

As long as there are not many states participating in the Ivory ban it seems like it would be pretty easy to dance around its limitations as long as its not illegal to posses Ivory.

re: legal ivory

As long as there's a market for legal ivory, there's a market for illegal ivory too. It's as simple as that. I made a decision many years ago that I would never use materials like this in my guitars, legal or not, and there's no way I'd touch the stuff for a pool cue either, at any price.

Rules is rules...laws is laws. Do what you want but don't kid yourself the legal ivory is somehow separate from illegal ivory, because one drives the other.

Pedro....no worry....ownership does not violate the law.........but CA cue-makers are screwed unless they move.

Ed Prewitt was supposed to be completing 2 matching shafts for my cue but it looks like that isn;t going to get accomplished now. I was debating selling my EP cue to pay for a specific cue-maker I adore but never found the right cue to buy. In hindsight, that may have been fortuitous since the current outlook is Ed isn't relocating and so that means no more ivory joint Ed Prewitt cues because of the ban. I know Fish & Wildlife has a summary of the ivory consumers within the boundaries of CA which makes it easy to audit anyone which they have been vested with the authority to do.

I figure since Ed's annual cue production has generally been pretty low, his ivory joint pool cues would be in greater demand since there won't be any more made. The ivory ban pretty much lends itself to future scarcity of ivory joint EP cues so I'm hanging onto mine & might even try getting another EP before the ban.

For those interested, here is a link to the lawsuit filed.

http://www.ivoryeducationinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/COMPLAINT-against-State-of-California.pdf

Obligatory quarterly ivory ban thread......yawn

Ya'll better get used to it. It will get worse before it gets better...and it will probably never get better.

In the guitar world, we lost tortoise shell for picks. Until recently, there was NO material that really captured it and mandolin players just had to deal. There are some synthetic materials that do just fine now, and are probably superior.

We lost ivory for nuts, saddles and bridge pins...actually, we were WAY ahead of the curve on that and it basically disappeared many decades ago in favor of cow bone and synthetic material, all of which is superior anyway IMHO and I don't think anyone misses it.

We lost Brazilian rosewood. Now that one really hurt because of it's acoustic and mechanical properties but you know what...we figured out how to build guitars just fine without it, and we're making the best playing and sounding guitars today than we ever had.

And we're going to loose more if we're not careful. Ebony is well on it's way to being a problem. Honduran Mahogany in the quality we need is getting harder to find. We adapt, and things continue to improve regardless.

Anyhow, I know ivory is linked with cues like Brazillian rosewood is linked with guitars, and yeah there's some pain involved, but smart money is going to be way ahead of the curve on this because it will disappear someday for all practical purposes, and future generations (if not current ones) won't even want it.

Anyhow, that's just my opinion based on what I've seen elsewhere. Believe me, no one misses Braz. Rosewood more than me, but it's best not to dwell on it because it's gone and that's that.

Why was the rosewood banned?

john coloccia said:

Ya'll better get used to it. It will get worse before it gets better...and it will probably never get better.

In the guitar world, we lost tortoise shell for picks. Until recently, there was NO material that really captured it and mandolin players just had to deal. There are some synthetic materials that do just fine now, and are probably superior.

We lost ivory for nuts, saddles and bridge pins...actually, we were WAY ahead of the curve on that and it basically disappeared many decades ago in favor of cow bone and synthetic material, all of which is superior anyway IMHO and I don't think anyone misses it.

We lost Brazilian rosewood. Now that one really hurt because of it's acoustic and mechanical properties but you know what...we figured out how to build guitars just fine without it, and we're making the best playing and sounding guitars today than we ever had.

And we're going to loose more if we're not careful. Ebony is well on it's way to being a problem. Honduran Mahogany in the quality we need is getting harder to find. We adapt, and things continue to improve regardless.

Anyhow, I know ivory is linked with cues like Brazillian rosewood is linked with guitars, and yeah there's some pain involved, but smart money is going to be way ahead of the curve on this because it will disappear someday for all practical purposes, and future generations (if not current ones) won't even want it.

Anyhow, that's just my opinion based on what I've seen elsewhere. Believe me, no one misses Braz. Rosewood more than me, but it's best not to dwell on it because it's gone and that's that.

Click to expand...

Excellent point. People will get over it. Ivory isn't that great a material to begin with, but it was the best at a certain point in time. Synthetics have come a long way, and antler and stag horn works like a charm as well.


Here's a great thread on Ebony and guitars. Slightly different subject, but some of the same points of view and philosophies should be applied to our attitudes on Ivory as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anCGvfsBoFY

us820 said:

Why was the rosewood banned?

Click to expand...

Because it was harvested to near extinction. Same as the tortoise.

Just as a coincidental observation about Sean's post, the CA ban takes effect on the start of the 3rd QTR of 2016......July 1st.

oneshotwiss said:

Wondering why you even opened the thread now? I didn't intend for this to turn into any kind of ethics thread about whether you agree with the use of ivory in the construction of pool cues. I was more curious what California cue makers will use in its place is all.

Click to expand...

I can't speak for them, but they'll probably just do what we did the in the guitar world...offer choices to the customer, none of which are exactly like ivory, and none of which are particularly inferior/superior depending how you see things. They're just different.

It's kind of sucky but it's also inevitable. As a craftsman, it's a great disappointment to me that I will never again get to work with these materials. I live in New England. I can't tell you how many times I go into an old home and see thousands of board feet beautiful, clear Chestnut on the floor, and I practically want to cry. Lost that one to a damn fungus. It used to grow like a weed...we made things like railroad ties out of it....fences, barns, cabins...you name it. Now it's a long lost memory.