Maybe so.
Then there is the polar opposite. The guy who documents the heck out of everything. Works hard to pump up the value. Talks to everybody first. Then asks way to much and has the cue for sale for 3 months, 6 months, a year, or more, turning down many offers.
It's his business. His sale. If he simply wants to belly up to the counter and say this is what I have, this is what I know, and this is who I am...and leave it at that, well, that's his business. I am not going to fault him for that. I am certainly not going to get riled up about it.
It seems to have gotten the attention of people who know a little about who he is, and what he should know, etc.
Do you think he could have gotten a lot more out of it? How much? Would it have been worth the time or trouble? I don't know.
Given what the cue is, and what it isn't, regardless of what one calls it, it certainly isn't a $20K Bushka.
The way I look at it, for the guy with the money, it may just simply be a cool thing to own.
There is a lot more that I don't know than I do know, of that I am certain. :wink:
As for provenance, the relative value varies a great deal. I have a feeling there will be more provenance established after this sale. Provenance after all is just the story that goes with an item, the origin and "custodial history". If you are lucky there is an official written record...like with car registrations where you can prove Steve McQueen owned a car, or pictures of the item in a certain context. A letter from an authority that authenticates the item isn't provenance...though in the future it will be part of the history of the item and hence the provenance.
In the art world there are people that make their career researching provenance. And even they sometimes get it wrong, it can make or break their career in some cases. It can involve very elaborate technology in the analysis of materials by spectroscopy and even deposits of pollen deposits to show where the item has been and when.
Even a Balabushka will not be worth the expense of the kind of in depth analysis that might be done to prove the provenance of a Rembrandt oil painting. A simple sketch by Rembrandt can easily be worth tens of thousands.
I can tell you something about what I know...or what I don't know. I know for certain there are people that have examined many Balabushkas. People that knew him. People that bought them new. Some of those people know things about Bushka cues that the rest of us don't. Those things aren't published on web sites, you can't see them in pictures, and the people who know these things play their cards close to their vests.
Why? Well, it isn't to crush the joy of the rest of us. It's because there was a huge surge in fakes that polluted the market.
Even the best expert does not know everything that GB did. Only GB knew.
Perhaps it is best that way. Perhaps that mystique and a few remaining mysteries will keep this matter alive.
It makes me wonder if he could have ever imagined how much we would be going on about every little thing. Certainly he took his work seriously...but could he imagine that decades later people would argue over what he did, how he did it, why he did it, and how it might matter?
Call it what you will, I call it a legacy. :smile:
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