Teachers Billiards, located near St Louis, MO, had a Cue Yard Sale today. Members of the community set up stations within the pool room where they showed off, bought, sold, and traded cues. There was quite a turnout, and I’d say it was a huge success. There were lots of neat cues available, cool cue collectors to hang out with, and I found a personal cue grail.
This JOSS was the fanciest cue in Nick’s Joss line, made in the 80s/90s.
I shared this photo with Nick, and he told me what he sold these for in the 80s
and said it was a really nice cue.
I’ve seen images of this model before but never one for sale with the Nick Varner logo at the joint. I’ve even seen Nick play with a similar Joss (see the fantastic 1990 match between him and Sigel that is legendary). He and Mike both had one very similar, actually. I think Mike ran his legendary 150 with one very close to this in looks as well. Ahhhh what a time for pool.
So, there I was, was circling the room, exploring table after table, all filled with pretty cues of all varieties….when first I stumbled upon one of our esteemed members, the man with the high IQ. After hanging with him, I was off…as I cornered one table I noticed one of those cue display carousels on a far table, spilling over with cool cues. A gentleman was spinning it, and as he did I saw this cue go buy, being ignored from the focused shopper (thank God).
I beelined over, then casually watching, at the same time praying he didn’t see or care about this cue. He didn’t. I tried to remain casual as I spun the carousel again, searching for and only stopping at this treasure. There it was, in all its glory. This would be mine.
I pulled it out, may have hugged and gave it a small kiss when the owner wasn’t looking, and then went about coming to a price. The seller was extremely fair and I left the cue show a happy fella. I also scored an old, Barton made in stroke case that is killer! All in all a fun day!
