Playing cue vs trophy cue

B

bbb

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im a player
and dont have the means to buy 2-3 to the sky thousands of dollars cues:(:frown:
is there a group of collectors who are into the most intricate exotic cues
(like renoir art etc) that will never be played with but are commodities to be bought and sold like fine wine and art
and another level of cues that were meant to be played with and are valued for their playability???


if there is a 2 tier system
lets list which cues are "players cues"
and which cues are "collecter cues"

also is it that the same cuemaker can make both???


your comments aappreciated
 
I could write way more on this topic than you want to read. So i'll keep it brief. and speak for myself only-i dont know other guys ideas of this.


I have always played with a good cue, before I could afford a Szam I played with a Tad or SW. Price and how good a cue hits are 2 separate things(90% of the time).

I am also a cue guy as well, I have always loved the artistic side of cues and the engineering that goes into making a cue play/hit/feel good.


I was lucky about 10 years ago and made some $$ and could afford any cue I wanted. I had a idea of what I always wanted to own, so I built up a colection that took 2 years. since then I have only made a few moves in cues. i own what i want, I dont want more cues or less of them. thats the cue guy in me talking. If I wasnt a player, I would still be interested in cues but wouldnt buy them. I like piano's too-but I cant play so I aint buying one.

Since I built the collection i got to play with lots of cues, I only have a handful of cues that have never been played with(they are art, collectible type cues).

What i did was take and use everything and over the next couple years I zero'ed down on a few cues I liked and played good with. then I kept a log of just how good I played with different cues. Which ever cue brought the best out of me I chose as a player, it also had to be something replaceable if I lost a Gus I would be sick. I did this over time and my retired players all performed well cause I had 1000's of hours play on them. But the cue that brought the best out of me was a Boar(way to fancy for a player, but what should I do? use a cue that I play worse with?). So I have used it for about 3 years. If I find a cue I play better with then it will get retired. I doubt that I will.


So I play with the cue that brings the best out of me, the time I spent shooting drills and keeping notes, i did everything possible to narrow it down to one cue. there was one Gus(ray martin owned it) that was a close 2nd. but I couldnt ever travel with that cue, If It got lost-i'd go on a rampage and then some.


So to me 99% of cues built are players, all the fancy stuff is just fancy. I just want to play. There is no line in the sand, no matter what size your bank roll is. Cues are for pool.

best
eric


PS I remember when my cue was 50% of my net worth, a very long time ago. I know a cue dont make the player. but the cue can bring out the best in a player. So forever I'll keep looking for a cue that brings the best out of me. It might be a $100 cue of $40,000-it dont matter I just want to play my best.
 
Last edited:
Playing trophy

bbb said:
im a player
and dont have the means to buy 2-3 to the sky thousands of dollars cues:(:frown:
is there a group of collectors who are into the most intricate exotic cues
(like renoir art etc) that will never be played with but are commodities to be bought and sold like fine wine and art
and another level of cues that were meant to be played with and are valued for their playability???


if there is a 2 tier system
lets list which cues are "players cues"
and which cues are "collecter cues"

also is it that the same cuemaker can make both???


your comments aappreciated
Click to expand...


Almost all (major majority) of collector cues are first and foremost players cues or coveted for their playablity. Whether they get played or not is another story.

Some cues are treated as purely collectible for one reason or another. After all, some of them are either rare as a Picasso or as one guy on here refers to them as "functional art."

I know numerous people who have a two tier system in their case everytime they go out to play (I am one of these people). They have their common every day cue that costs in the 500 to 1K range and they have that "special" cue that hits the 2k plus range. I shoot with the common cue for the majority of games but resort to the higher end cue as a confidence boost if I feel I need one. I know a guy that used a Gina with a Gus for a backup. It all becomes relevant to what you can afford and what you want to use.
 
Fatboy2 said:
Price and how good a cue hits are 2 separate things(90% of the time).

What i did was take and use everything and over the next couple years I zero'ed down on a few cues I liked and played good with. then I kept a log of just how good I played with different cues. Which ever cue brought the best out of me I chose as a player, it also had to be something replaceable if I lost a Gus I would be sick. I did this over time and my retired players all performed well cause I had 1000's of hours play on them. But the cue that brought the best out of me was a Boar(way to fancy for a player, but what should I do? use a cue that I play worse with?). So I have used it for about 3 years. If I find a cue I play better with then it will get retired. I doubt that I will.

So I play with the cue that brings the best out of me, the time I spent shooting drills and keeping notes, i did everything possible to narrow it down to one cue.

I know a cue dont make the player but the cue can bring out the best in a player. So forever I'll keep looking for a cue that brings the best out of me. It might be a $100 cue of $40,000-it dont matter I just want to play my best.
Click to expand...

These are all good points and a good way to figure out which cue best fits the person using it when someone is looking for a cue to play with.

Regarding the red highlighted area, what is your opinion on how much a shaft plays in the overall playability of a cue. For instance, I have not had as many cues as a lot of the members on here but somewhere around the 250 mark would be close. Most were bought for resale but I did make it a point to hit a at least a few balls with all of them to see whether or not I liked them. For the most part, I found you can actually tell a difference in a cues playability by the price tag it carries.....to a certain extent. Over the last ten or twelve years I found a dozen or so cues that I enjoyed playing with for an extended period of time. Most of which were semi-highend or highend like Tascarella, SW, Mottey, JMW, Scruggs, Harris, Bender.....etc. Getting back to the role a shaft plays in a cues overall performance, I ended up settling on a Rick Howard cue and it was basically because of one certain shaft. I have played with the cue for the last few years and the only drawback I found was I am more comfortable playing with a wrapless cue. I have done a few big pin conversions on some Predator cues and ended up fitting the shaft to a wrapless Predator butt and imo it plays just as good if not better than before.
 
Fatboy2 said:
I could write way more on this topic than you want to read. So i'll keep it brief. and speak for myself only-i dont know other guys ideas of this.


I have always played with a good cue, before I could afford a Szam I played with a Tad or SW. Price and how good a cue hits are 2 separate things(90% of the time).

I am also a cue guy as well, I have always loved the artistic side of cues and the engineering that goes into making a cue play/hit/feel good.


I was lucky about 10 years ago and made some $$ and could afford any cue I wanted. I had a idea of what I always wanted to own, so I built up a colection that took 2 years. since then I have only made a few moves in cues. i own what i want, I dont want more cues or less of them. thats the cue guy in me talking. If I wasnt a player, I would still be interested in cues but wouldnt buy them. I like piano's too-but I cant play so I aint buying one.

Since I built the collection i got to play with lots of cues, I only have a handful of cues that have never been played with(they are art, collectible type cues).

What i did was take and use everything and over the next couple years I zero'ed down on a few cues I liked and played good with. then I kept a log of just how good I played with different cues. Which ever cue brought the best out of me I chose as a player, it also had to be something replaceable if I lost a Gus I would be sick. I did this over time and my retired players all performed well cause I had 1000's of hours play on them. But the cue that brought the best out of me was a Boar(way to fancy for a player, but what should I do? use a cue that I play worse with?). So I have used it for about 3 years. If I find a cue I play better with then it will get retired. I doubt that I will.


So I play with the cue that brings the best out of me, the time I spent shooting drills and keeping notes, i did everything possible to narrow it down to one cue. there was one Gus(ray martin owned it) that was a close 2nd. but I couldnt ever travel with that cue, If It got lost-i'd go on a rampage and then some.


So to me 99% of cues built are players, all the fancy stuff is just fancy. I just want to play. There is no line in the sand, no matter what size your bank roll is. Cues are for pool.

best
eric


PS I remember when my cue was 50% of my net worth, a very long time ago. I know a cue dont make the player. but the cue can bring out the best in a player. So forever I'll keep looking for a cue that brings the best out of me. It might be a $100 cue of $40,000-it dont matter I just want to play my best.
Click to expand...

Nice write up.

Oh and thanks for keeping it brief. Haha
 
Fatboy2 said:
I could write way more on this topic than you want to read. So i'll keep it brief.

So to me 99% of cues built are players, all the fancy stuff is just fancy. I just want to play. There is no line in the sand, no matter what size your bank roll is. Cues are for pool.

best
eric
Click to expand...

THAT would have been 'keeping it brief'.


Anyway, back to the point of this thread. NO, there is no real two tiered system that designates this a players cue and that a collectors cue. That is decided by the cue owner (or the buyer, if its an item for sale). But YES. There are a number of collectors out there who just acquire cues (be it from dealers OR cuemakers) who buy them just because "its the biggest cue so and so ever made" or "It was made by "so and so". And yeah, some of these guys admit they have no intention of playing with a lot of these 'collectibles' which in itself is bizarre.

I don't doubt that some of these guys buy up cues like those because they think of it as 'an investment' which is dumb. But on the whole, the guys spending tons of money on cues like those ($10k +) are usually (or at least hopefully) spending disposable income. That is, the purchase isn't gonna make them default on a mortgage payment. And if they ever DO decide to sell and they take a loss, the loss won't break them. Not even close.

Still, there is the rare odd guy who has $10k burning a hole in his bank account so he spends $9500 on a ____ cue because in his mind, "it'll only increase in value". Well, the I'm sure there are a ton of cue buyers out there right now wondering why they can't get their asking price for whatever they're selling. Think about it. How many times do you see "I can't believe this cue is still here" in the Wanted/For sale threads?! You'd have better luck investing in real estate in this economy than you do investing in pool cues.

Regardless of the fancy factor, I'd say the VAST majority of the higher end cuemakers out there make their $10,000+ cues to play just as good as their $1,000 cues. Sure there are 'players cues' and 'collectors cues'. But that designation is usually made by the owner. Not the maker. If you have a $30k Black Boar and you play with it, it may be fancy as hell. But its still a player.
 
Opinions are like...

The guys who make cues for $10,000+ don't make cues for $1000. But those cue makers make great playing cues whether or not they have fancy inlays. Are their less fancy cues worth more than cues from cue makers from whom you can get a cue for ~$500? Each of us needs to make that call. It was pretty clear to me at this year's SBE that the overall quality of current cue making is very high. It is also clear to me that the value of cues like Szamboti, et al., are not driven by mystique but are the result of well earned reputations.
 
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