Very nice offering, Kevin. As you know, I'm a sucker for this particular design, an all time Gina classic, and in my mind one of the most beautiful cue designs ever conceived.
This cue has stacked veneers in the butt window frames using left-over blanks from the Rat Pack cues from the early 1970s. Almost all Ginas built in the second coming to cue making had mitered veneers, but Ernie "cheated" on this cue and used old blanks. I was not really very surprised to learn that Ernie had saved the blanks during the years of his retirement from cue building, but I was a little blown away when he went in a drawer some 20 years after building this cue (and 40 since the Rat Pack) and flipped me one of the blanks.
Thanks. I went a week with no eBay income because we won't be around to mail stuff this week, so I think I'll be loading auctions from the road and this cue will probably make it up for auction on Sunday. I'm a little surprised it didn't sell right away, I thought I had it priced that way. I guess we will see in a week if nobody snaps it up tomorrow.