John Wright Information
- Thread starter Ken_4fun
- Start date
Ken_4fun said:
Everything you wanted to know you will find in this thread. He was a class act and many still have stacks of Kodak's and prices. I love looking through them from time to time.
http://forums.azbilliards.com/showthread.php?t=78782&highlight=john+wright
I Knew Him Well
John was the first big cue dealer to advertise and promote a mailing list of collectible cues. He was a retired commodities broker in Palatine, IL who did business out of his basement. He had a pool table there and a gun safe where he kept all of his cues.
He really liked Balabushkas and Szambotis, and he also promoted Bill Stroud's best stuff at the time. I bought a couple of Gus's from him and visited his house several times.
He had a mailing list and he would send standard sized color pictures of his cues lined up on his pool table along with prices and descriptions on a seperate letter.
I still have all of the mailings he sent me.
John was the first big cue dealer to advertise and promote a mailing list of collectible cues. He was a retired commodities broker in Palatine, IL who did business out of his basement. He had a pool table there and a gun safe where he kept all of his cues.
He really liked Balabushkas and Szambotis, and he also promoted Bill Stroud's best stuff at the time. I bought a couple of Gus's from him and visited his house several times.
He had a mailing list and he would send standard sized color pictures of his cues lined up on his pool table along with prices and descriptions on a seperate letter.
I still have all of the mailings he sent me.
This link should help:
http://home.att.net/~wrightcuecompany/
http://home.att.net/~wrightcuecompany/
I sold a few cues through John. Always a pleasure.
Here is one deal that I dont believe I would have gotten too many places.
John was selling a Joss West of mine. We were not getting the price we both thought we should be getting. I agreed to lower the price as John told me he had a buyer at the new amount.
When I received the check it was for more. I called and asked and he said that the buyer did not show. Another fellow in the pool room looked at it and John went to the original price. The fellow bought it.
Not only did John pay me the correct amount he only took his portion from the lowered price. I tried many times to get the difference to him but he insisted on not taking it.
We never had any issues and he had a great list of collectors and buyers.
RIP John T Wright MCS
Here is one deal that I dont believe I would have gotten too many places.
John was selling a Joss West of mine. We were not getting the price we both thought we should be getting. I agreed to lower the price as John told me he had a buyer at the new amount.
When I received the check it was for more. I called and asked and he said that the buyer did not show. Another fellow in the pool room looked at it and John went to the original price. The fellow bought it.
Not only did John pay me the correct amount he only took his portion from the lowered price. I tried many times to get the difference to him but he insisted on not taking it.
We never had any issues and he had a great list of collectors and buyers.
RIP John T Wright MCS
Ken_4fun said:
John lived less than 10 miles from me in the shadow of Arlington Park Race Track in northwest suburban Chicago. My earliest recollection of him is in the early 1980s maybe even the 1970s. He would frequent pool rooms and bars with pool tables, carrying a few cues he had for sale. He would regularly show up at local tournaments with a dozen or two cues to sell. If he sold a cue out of your room he gave you a $50 jelly roll.
At some point in 1980s he started sending out the photos others have mentioned (I have a fairly complete set). He was slow to get on the Web, but did so a year or two before he passed away.
John was a good guy and was into cues because he loved them. He was originally from Michigan and I think his father had a pool room there, although I could be wrong about that. We played quite a bit of pool in the basement on his Gold Crown.
I liked dealing with John not only because of his proximity and because he was a good guy but also because he only charged 10% commission on consignment sales. Over the years he probably sold 10 or 12 cues for me and I probably bought 30.
My first purchase from John was a Balabuska with 6 shafts. Two were made by George, 2 by Gus and 2 others. Next I bought two Gus Szambotis, a couple of Billy Stroud cues and a Gina. John didn't handle any mediocre cues. He also interceded for me with two cue makers when I had some quality issues and he also cheerfully would handle sending cues out to get refinished, rewrapped or any other service one would require.
One thing that really stuck out about John is that wherever you ran into him he would come across the room with a big smile on his face and his hand stuck out to shake yours and greet you. He would be a good subject for a magazine article and I could put any interested writer in touch with John's son Greg.
RIP my friend
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bob c said:
Yes John was a great guy. I bought a cue from him in 1984 and now it's worth more than 10 times the original value. In fact I still have the receipt it's pretty neat to show someone you only paid $240 for a Southwest cue. I think it would be great for someone to do an article about John he truly deserves some attention for all the years he devoted to this great sport.
John was a great go-between. Always putting buyers together with sellers. He moved quite a bit of my McDermott collection.
Before I could get a list of my exotics to him, he passed away.
Before I could get a list of my exotics to him, he passed away.
One of his Mc Daniel's Full Amboyna Butt Lazy S is here in Germany,how cool is that.I love this Cue so much and it's a Monster Player too.
Ralf
Ralf
Thanks for all the history, I sent a photo of my Wes Hunter to Wes to see if he remembered it, Wes told me it was 10 years old and had be sold to John Wright, so this is interesting reading. Thanks again.
A
a_susie_cue
Guest
John was always one who showed up to tournaments with his sticks in tow. He had many beautiful cues. There was a memorial tournament for him quite a few years back. He was well known in the Chicago area.
hangemhigh said:
I missed the above thread and didn't know about John's passing. Greg and the rest of John's family have my belated but sincerest condolences.
I met John at one of the U.S. OPen One Pocket Championships in Kalamazoo Michigan at least several years ago. I had gotten knocked out of the tournament and at the time, I believe I was playing with a Mark Moore cue which played all right but wasn't considered a high end cue by any stretch of the imagination, maybe a few hundred dollars or so.
I wandered by John's table of cues and saw more beautiful pre-owned cues than I had ever seen in one spot in my life (at that time). I wasn't really in the market for a cue and told John so when he offered to let me hit a few balls with some of his cues.
John had so many cues and my knowledge of cues was extremely limited at that time, so he just handed me a cue and said, "Go hit some balls with that one". There was an open table next to his multi-table display of cues and shot several shots at full speed and tested out the cue he handed to me. He then handed me another cue and I repeated my "test" and I told him again that I wasn't interested in buying a cue at that time and he said it was OK, but go ahead and hit some balls, which I did for practically an hour. It was fun testing out the different cues and feeling the way they hit. I have never been that much into how fancy a cue was. It has always been about the way they hit that mattered to me.
John seemed to enjoy handing me a different cue every couple of minutes and I obliged him by warping in ball after ball on the small 8 foot table. After a while, I got "real" comfortable hitting balls at warp speed on the 8 footer and was actually in pretty good stroke. I would hit several shots and then look at the identification tag on the each cue with the price marked and hand it back to John, smiling and saying thank you.
After hitting several shots at warp speed, with one rather fancy looking cue, I looked down at the identification tag and remembered that the price tag took my breath away when I realized I was SLAMMING balls into the pockets with an $8500 cue. I handed the cue back to John and apologized for hitting the balls so hard. He just smiled and said he wasn't worried and that he knew I wouldn't damage the cue by the way I handled each of the previous cues. He said if a tip flew off or a ferrule broke it was probably defective and he would just have to have it replaced because it was defective in the first place.
Yes Greg, your Dad was a SUPER-NICE guy, even to strangers like me.
JoeyA
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