rackem said:
I have heard that Peter Balner is now or was connected with Mali but he does not have any connection with present day Palmer.
I know you are a collector and probably cringed at the idea. But, for a time after 1994 there were import cues with a Palmer logo. Does that mean that the Balner's actually sold the rights to the Palmer name similar to Balubuska.
Might we be seeing higher quality Palmer imports similar to the new Balubuskas.
Rackem and Icon,
Actually, there was an imported manufactured line even before Palmer closed in 1994. It's pretty easy to spot these cues.
I call the first through 3rd catalog era the "Old Line". The Old Line cues, the 1st through 3rd catalog designs, are all made by Palmer from whatever parts were available at a particular point in time. These are the custom orders and 1st through 3rd catalog cues and the focus of my collecting.
By far, most of these cues were made and sold before 1975, however, some examples were made in the Palmer shop by special order only well into the late 1980's, in which case they used whatever parts were available including high quality imported forearms made by Helmstetter. Some are easy to ID others are not. You will also see Szamboti forearms on these cues and even Spain, whatever worked for a particular cue, whatever they had. They still had a supply of bar cue blanks from Katz as well.
There were a lot of different lines, but basically, after Peter left Palmer ( in1984) they became more involved with marketing manufactured lines of cues. Palmer then transitioned from being a custom cue maker to a distributor and marketer of line cues and cases, as well as products.
Peter and Fred Mali were friends and I believe business partners as well in another venture after he left Palmer.
Palmer distributed Mali cues in the early 1990's. This was an imported line, similar to what Lucasi did later. After Palmer closed they later they sold the rights to the Palmer name to a Taiwan manufacturer who still operates as Palmer Industries. These cues have a different logo. there is a Triangle version and a round version.
I am in the process of putting together photos of forearms and logos for peter to ID, so that certain features can be used to better identify date of manufacture and other information of the "old line" cues.
If you have any Palmers, please e-mail me pictures, thanks.
Chris
