Last week, two different friends approached me asking if I’d be willing to sell one of my cues. They know what Inown and have played with my cues as well. And they also know how I feel about breaking CA’s ivory ban but they asked anyway saying I can pass them the cue under the dinner table or they’d just pack it their case after we played pool. So Intold them I hadn’t any idea what to even ask for but I didn’t carry what I thought was more than adequate insurance on my cues just in case something ever happened. So that is this thread’s provenance.
I tell the first one that asked to pick a cue as an example of which he would like to own. He selected my Prewitt Cue. I knew how much I paid in 2011 and didn’t tell him. We both are friends with Bill Grassley and I purchased the Prewitt cue from Bill trading in a 6 point Szamboti design Mottey cue with piloted ivory joint and cash. He call Bill who remembered the cue and he checked his records anyway and gives him a price range much higher by thousands of dollars over what I paid. He still is undeterred and offered more than what Bill told him but the Prewitt cue still resides in my case. I wouldn’t pay what Bill said my Prewitt cue is worth and I’m sort of still sticker shocked.
My other friend picked my Scruggs cue and I knew I wouldn’t ever sell that one. Maybe I’d have traded it toward my Hercek dream cue, or one of Vinnie’s Hercek cues, but I still have to pony up a lot of dough to make it happen. So he contacted a cue dealer he trusted and was given a price that was more than he wanted to spend. More surprisingly was the cue dealer asked him to let me know he’d like first opportunity to buy the cue if I wanted to sell it. Apparently, Tim did not make a lot of flat faced radial pin ivory joints which I had heard before.
So he tells me what he learned and we discussed ordering a custom cue being built versus buying one through a dealer or private sale. He’s ready to spend thousands for the right cue and I think he venture into the 4k range. So we started browsing dealer website and I was blown away he wasn’t since he’s already searched. It seems absurd that merry widow designs with fancy rings and a simple Hoppe ring is selling for over $3k and there were several. Fancier cue design were commanding $4K & $5K. Every design in my cue case was more elaborate than the cues we viewed that my friend would be interested in. And I thought the pricing we viewed was insane. Thank goodness I stopped collecting because I likely still would if CA hadn’t enacted an ivory ban in July 2016. I’d just switch to fancy Sneaky Pete designs.
