raemondo said:
Hey Tate,
You being the Palmer man and all, I was just wondering what you thought of Dick Abbott's Palmer Ultra Supreme...I haven't seen that many Palmer's but boy I think that's fancy. I'd love to put the pic here but I don't have rights to the picture. It'd on
http://billiardcue.com/cues.php?view=2
IMO, 104 MOP inlays + Ebony + Ivory ferrules = masterpiece.
The Model 20 was the Grand Pooh-Bah of the all the unabashed Palmer's. It was "pimp" to coin a phrase!
Here's a page I did on one of my Model 20's. It's my favorite page on my web site. I looked up the original owner from the name on the label, located him, and got this rich story:
http://palmercollector.com/Model20KerryPage.html
I've bought several of my Palmers and cases from Dick Abbott - he digs up a lot of buried treasure.
When it comes to valuation of Model 20's, it's
very important to have two original shafts, which Dick has. He has valued the cue higher than I have on my website, however, these cues are very difficult to locate because they are real "keepers", the people who have them don't want to sell them, and if someone wants a nice Model 20 and are willing to pay for it, they know Dick has it.
If you notice in the pictures, the shaft collars have a different (brownish) tint on the pearlized rings. This is common on all the Model 20's I'
ve seen. The MOP is slightly translucent, so the lighter maple color shows through.
Dick has said in the ad the cue is original. Looking at it, I would 100% agree with the only possible exception being the wrap. Although these ebony cues look great with black leather wraps, Palmer did very few leather wraps. Most were irish linen or nylon. Leather was not really popular back then (linen was all the rage). In the 1970's, when this cue was made, if a cue was ordered with a leather wrap, it was sent out to Gus Szamboti. I have several examples of Gus' leather wraps. He tended to use a thicker leather which completely filled the groove level and his seams were nearly invisible. The leather was a little different than today's pebble finish fine grain. However, I could be wrong and it could be original if Dick talked with the original owner he would know.
The Model 20 is always a fabulous display cue. At Bill Strouds cue show in Las Vegas, I put mine together and displayed it in one piece on a rack. Needless to say, it got a lot of attention.
Chris
