I think I see what the comment was getting at.
Value.
This may be complete bullshit so if you read it and don't like it the time you waste is your own fault. That's a disclaimer.
I have a minute, so here we go...
When I look at what you guys do I reflect on my own work.
The value of a humble "cheap" piece of paper.
When I meet with a doctor or medical student for an hour, they pay for that hour. That hour is an academic hour, by federal law and regulation it's 50 minutes, not 60.
During that hour I might give them a document. The document is one of thousands I have written over the years like pages in books. It might only be one to three pages. Years ago it was on paper, today I send them a PDF in a web conference. The documents all have revision dates and I have archives of all previous revisions. I am constantly revising and updating all of these documents as well as producing new ones. They are unique to my style and structured for practical learning and application in medicine. The information is highly curated. They all fit into one big concept I call the clinical process.
Lets say that document was originally produced 15 years ago, is 1 page, and has been through 10 revisions. I might have 5 hours in the production of the original document, and 1 hour in each revision. That's 15 hours.
My standard institutional rate if a medical school or residency is paying me, is $250. If it is the individual paying for the hour, a medical student, or resident, then I only charge $120, which I consider a discounted rate. I could charge practicing doctors more, but I only charge them the student rate.
So, when I work, I value my time at $250/hr. Like the guy that owns and operates a backhoe that does not move one inch for less than x amount of money, but he will cut deals for volume work, friends, etc. He has his "standard rate". And if you piss him off you won't be able to afford the quote.
The document I suggested would be valued at $3,750 if applying my standard rate, and I give it away to the client as part of the hour they are paying for. But to produce it required tens of thousands of hours of education, training, experience, and expertise in addition to a foundation education valued around 2 or 3 million up front. How is that factored in?
I often also produce a whiteboard live on screen, which they save. What is that worth? With the tens of thousands of hours of education, training, experience, and expertise integrated into producing it, I think that number is hard to come up with.
So, when we look at the work of a cuemaker, what is the value of a piece of paper he might use?
Many (most?) of the materials used are not by themselves tremendously expensive. Even many highly sought or highly regarded materials actually are not tremendously expensive. They are certainly relatively expensive when you compare them to less costly alternatives.
All of the education, training, experience, machinery, and time invested in the act of using that material contributes to the value.
So if I have a local less experienced cuemaker do some work, like put on a new tip and ferrule, and rewrap a cue, versus having a famous name highly experienced cuemaker do it, what's the difference? The greatest value work is clearly from the more experienced maker, even though the price I pay for the work isn't actually so different.
So what if it's an entire cue, scratch made?
The vast majority of the work of the cuemakers isn't copyrighted or trademarked in any way. We can easily pick up a copy or "tribute" cue. They can be fairly exact copies. The materials, unless they are one of the "unobtanium" materials, are relatively cheap, and fairly easy to source.
A piece of paper in a cue made by a local "unknown" guy that is patient and meticulous enough to keep his centers on, keep his points even, keep his rings lined up, and finish it all perfectly, and simply use good materials and methods has a solid value and you will pay him for that. If he goes on to become famous, that cue could be worth thousands more that you paid, or even tens of thousands.
What about work with no name on it, and only incidental materials costs?
For example, I picked up a cue fairly cheap, around $50. that was around 45 years old. Many (most?) would have had it professionally refinished. I cleaned and polished it, and touched up many things in completely undetectable ways. It took much time. I even had to do research and testing on other "junk" cues to get the materials and methods right before actually applying them. If you put the cue under UV light, you can see the work I did, otherwise it is undetectable. When's the last time you examined a cue under UV light? It was tedious meticulous work that I think a cuemaker likely wouldn't engage in, unless maybe working on a museum piece like a Bushka, as a matter of restoration or preservation. But even then, in the cue world refinishing seems to generally rule over preservation of originality.
So what is the outcome? I estimate the real world current market value of that cue to be $800 to $1,000. So, I made out like a bandit, right? Well, I don't know how much time I have in it, but if you apply the value of my time the investment is insane and the value is so upside down it looks as bad as the US national debt. It would have been a helluva lot more economically reasonable to have it professionally refinished.
Art is in the eye of the beholder. When people look at cues, each sees something different. The value is ethereal. I figure that when we pay for the fine work of a fine, highly expert, highly regarded cuemaker the value invested is like the drops of water in the ocean. You can't actually count them, and you certainly can't see all the fish, nor the treasure at the bottom.
This passion we all share certainly is an interesting thing. I have been studying luthier repair and restoration work to learn to fix chips and cracks in undetectable ways and avoid refinishing. I have also studied how high end leather goods are restored, like purses, shoes and boots are restored. They can take a pair of shoes worth $20,000 that got chewed up by a dog and restore them completely, restoring rather than replacing the leather. It's amazing. Why am I doing this? I don't have much free time. It does not make sense. I guess because I am crazy like that. Not normal.
I have a copy of the text of the US Constitution that I printed from the internet and put in a dollar store frame and hung on the wall in my office. What is that piece of paper worth?
My life has been highly invested in the value of human life, extending it, improving it, and reducing suffering. What is the value of the first breath of a newborn? What is the value of the last breath of a man? What is the value of a moment in life? I don't know. I certainly know that if a moment is wasted one can never get it back. There is no repository of wasted moments, they are just gone. So I spent a few moments here today, and if you got this far you spent them too. Let us hope they are not wasted.
