Early Black Boar

Ahh, damn. I remember when tony and his other (Vince?) were pounding the pavement with the new brand and you could get one for $6. I shoulda bought some.

I kind. That cue is freaking awesome and rarer than a near on a bicycle.

Hot.
 
Nice offering

As a Black Boar fan and tons of knowledge on Tonys cues , this is the rarest four point I've seen in a decade

Plus rare offering on BB made JP's he hates making them and often 99.9% of the time refuses to make them ..also rare to find and worth money alone

GLWTS
 
Ahh, damn. I remember when tony and his other (Vince?) were pounding the pavement with the new brand and you could get one for $6. I shoulda bought some.
.

Myself, I remember that well, I was offered a free one, all I had to do was play with it, that was a deal breaker for me.
 
At the beginning!

Myself, I remember that well, I was offered a free one, all I had to do was play with it, that was a deal breaker for me.

Tony made Alan Hopkins a cue to try to jump start the business. The one that really put him on the map was the one he made for Francisco Bustamante. Dennis Searing got on the map after making a cue for Steve Mizerak. Timmy made a cue for Weenie Beenie for non gratis. What does that prove other than they are good marketers of thier products.
This is the rarest 4 point BB that i have ever seen. The only ivory razor blade BB i have seen. Almost as cute as Anthony's little dog. lol
Bob
 
I'M BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK!!!!!!!!!! Hello again all. Vince here. I absoLUTEly remember this cue. It's curly maple not the typical birdseye we used. Honestly, I can't for the life of me remember who we made it for. From the gent selling it I'd like to know if the dashes have a slight radius at the ends of them or are they perfectly 90 degrees? Magnifying glass time. I'm willing to almost bet they're radiused slightly. Which means they were inlayed and not one of those inserted rings of ebony and ivory. Also, I'd love to see an up close and personal shot of the large inlay in the heel. If it's possible to discern can you see any grain going through the inner frame of that large solid piece of ivory? The reason I ask is this: We would from time to time do that sort of shape in one of two ways. We'd either insert a single large piece of ivory and then mill a pocket for the frame, then fill it with epoxy. Or...we'd mill a pocket for the outer piece of ivory, leave the inner ebony frame in place and mill a pocket for the large piece of ivory. The veneers in the points are more than likely ebony and maple which was the only "white" wood we'd use when we wanted that color of veneer up top. Earlier cues we used that white fiber material which was really WHITE white. Have you ever had the wrap taken off? I'd love to see that area just beneath the top of the wrap and I'm willing to bet yet again that the base of those points is offset from one point to the next. At the base of the points two would be higher, while the opposing two points bases would be 3/4" or so lower. We found that to be a superior hit and the strength of the cue went through the roof.

To give a brief update.........I finally found a job. I'm working for a non-profit homeless organization here in Philly and I work to find housing for homeless veterans. The pay sucks but this past week I was able to place a light at the end of the tunnel for 9 well deserving vets who really need a break in life. So, like I said......lousy pay.......but a great feeling of accomplishment at the end of each day. Essentially, we get the guys/girls in their OWN apartment, we pay the rent for five months or so and in the interim we help them find substantial work and wrap them in services to help them get their lives back. As a sidebar....if you know of ANY veteran who is homeless please let me know and I'll put you in touch with the VA Program in your area who CAN help. To all my friends who helped me get through yet another rough patch in life..........thanks guys. I'm soon to be hitting balls again for DAMN sure.
 
Absolutely correct. We contracted with Allen and built him a cue for some photo ops and such. He tried to play with it but it was such a different animal from the Costa he'd been using for such a long time that he couldn't get used to it. He ended up using it as a break cue in fact. We went up to NJ a bundle of times to get with Allen and tweak the custom piece we built him. We even did a really weird thing....we built a cue...an entire cue....that could be disassembled piece by piece and have weight added in various spots along the length of the butt which led to some pretty interesting results. We also took a slew of shafts up to Allen. To this day he was the only guy I've ever met who could feel the difference in diameter of a shaft that was only .0005 (1/2 of 1000th of an inch). With shafts of identical diameter Allen could feel the difference in 1/10 of an ounce. In the total weight of a cue he could feel the difference between a cue that weighed 19.750 and 19.760........again......that's TOTAL weight. You know that little cap screw that holds the rubber baby buggy bumper in the heel??? Allen could tell you just from picking up the cue when it was in the cue and when it was not. I'm not kidding either. His senses were so fine tuned to the Nth degree. The cue Bustamante won the Bicycle Club event with was off the shelf. We'd built a pink ivory cue, loved the look. FB came in, fell in love with it and hit some balls. He took it with him to Calif to play in that event and used off the shelf shafts etc. At that point nothing had been fine tuned for him other than we finished up a shaft or two that he needed and sent them out to Calif. We built a sister to that cue and sold it to my great friend Terry W. from N. VA. As for the marketing of cues.....it was Frank's idea (Tony's brother) who wanted to do the endorsement ditty with pros. Tony and I were actually against it because at that time (no offense here guys) a pro would get the cue, play with it, get broke and sell the thing. So, we switched to a concept of we'd build a pro tour player a cue but they had to pay for the materials. As far as I know the only.......ONLY......guy who received a cue from us, played with it but then got an endorsement deal with another company and RETURNED our cue.......was Grady Matthews. We did give a few cues to local players who were the cream of the crop at that time and most of those cues we never saw again. One such player whose name shall remain anonymous actually received the cue from us.....then when he was asked about it by a potential customer he said, (paraphrasing here) "Yeah. They gave me the cue to test out but I don't really like it and wouldn't buy one." He continued to play with that cue for the next five or six years and wanted everything on a silver platter. C'est la vie. You get what you pay for in the world of marketing I suppose. And now to wax nostalgic: At that time Billy Johnson (Wade Crane) and Grady were running around together. At a One-Pocket tournament in the Landover area I was sitting with Billy and I asked, "Why are you guys bopping around together, you're such different personalities." Billy's reply was, "Well, one day, Grady is going to flip and go off like a skyrocket and I would be really sad if I wasn't there to see it." One of the funniest things I've ever heard. Bye for now all.......
Vince.
 
Welcome back my friend.

I'M BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK!!!!!!!!!! Hello again all. Vince here. I absoLUTEly remember this cue. It's curly maple not the typical birdseye we used. Honestly, I can't for the life of me remember who we made it for. From the gent selling it I'd like to know if the dashes have a slight radius at the ends of them or are they perfectly 90 degrees? Magnifying glass time. I'm willing to almost bet they're radiused slightly. Which means they were inlayed and not one of those inserted rings of ebony and ivory. Also, I'd love to see an up close and personal shot of the large inlay in the heel. If it's possible to discern can you see any grain going through the inner frame of that large solid piece of ivory? The reason I ask is this: We would from time to time do that sort of shape in one of two ways. We'd either insert a single large piece of ivory and then mill a pocket for the frame, then fill it with epoxy. Or...we'd mill a pocket for the outer piece of ivory, leave the inner ebony frame in place and mill a pocket for the large piece of ivory. The veneers in the points are more than likely ebony and maple which was the only "white" wood we'd use when we wanted that color of veneer up top. Earlier cues we used that white fiber material which was really WHITE white. Have you ever had the wrap taken off? I'd love to see that area just beneath the top of the wrap and I'm willing to bet yet again that the base of those points is offset from one point to the next. At the base of the points two would be higher, while the opposing two points bases would be 3/4" or so lower. We found that to be a superior hit and the strength of the cue went through the roof.

To give a brief update.........I finally found a job. I'm working for a non-profit homeless organization here in Philly and I work to find housing for homeless veterans. The pay sucks but this past week I was able to place a light at the end of the tunnel for 9 well deserving vets who really need a break in life. So, like I said......lousy pay.......but a great feeling of accomplishment at the end of each day. Essentially, we get the guys/girls in their OWN apartment, we pay the rent for five months or so and in the interim we help them find substantial work and wrap them in services to help them get their lives back. As a sidebar....if you know of ANY veteran who is homeless please let me know and I'll put you in touch with the VA Program in your area who CAN help. To all my friends who helped me get through yet another rough patch in life..........thanks guys. I'm soon to be hitting balls again for DAMN sure.

Vince, did you ever get an ivory ferrule put on the cue i sent to you? You might never miss if you did. I'm glad to hear from you again and will probably see you in Philly before long. Keep posting so everyone can know how things are going with you. Take care. "country"
 
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