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fortasse Inner circle 1201 Posts |
Does anybody have any idea why there so very few collectible cups up for sale on Ebay, etc, in recent times? At last check, apart from a set of Charlie Miller/Magic Inc. cups and a set of Gazzo's, there's nothing much to speak of.
Fortasse |
Bill Palmer Eternal Order Only Jonathan Townsend has more than 24312 Posts |
Typically, this time of year, people are going on vacation. So there may be fewer items on eBay than around income tax time. These things go in waves.
"The Swatter"
Founder of CODBAMMC My Chickasaw name is "Throws Money at Cups." www.cupsandballsmuseum.com |
Kent Wong Inner circle Edmonton, Alberta, Canada 2458 Posts |
Easy answer. Bill bought them all!
Kent
"Believing is Seeing"
<BR>______________________ <BR> <BR>www.kentwongmagic.com |
Bill Palmer Eternal Order Only Jonathan Townsend has more than 24312 Posts |
No, I left two sets.
"The Swatter"
Founder of CODBAMMC My Chickasaw name is "Throws Money at Cups." www.cupsandballsmuseum.com |
fortasse Inner circle 1201 Posts |
I'm still a bit stumped by this. There must be thousands(.....OK, hundreds) of first-rate modern cups out there (by Riser, Cellini,Gazzo/Gary Animal, Magic Inc/Charlie Miller, RNT II, House of Magic/Buma, Johnson Products, etc.) and even more vintage cups (Martinka, Brema, Burtini, Abbott, National Magic, P&L, Paul Fox/Danny Dew, Ross Bertram, etc.) and yet when you check out the auctions on Ebay, Martinka, KT Magic, Ron Allesi, etc. and the internet stores, there's hardly anything of any consequence. Where are all the good cups hiding and what does it take to get them out into the open for purchase? Of course, rarity keeps prices high but the current level of circulation is mystifyingly low.
Fortasse |
James Kernen Regular user Arizona 160 Posts |
And I still want a set of Smooth Silver Sherwoods :-(
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Bill Palmer Eternal Order Only Jonathan Townsend has more than 24312 Posts |
I'll let you in on a big secret. There are about 25 really serious cup collectors who will buy almost any cup that is issued. Rarity makes them even more attractive. The modern cup makers know this, and they limit the number of sets they produce. A run of 50 sets is really fairly large.
With the exception of Morrisey, Jim Riser, Auke van Dokkum and Johnson Products, most cup sets are produced by outside manufacturers. Danny Dew was a perfect example of this. He would have one of the local spinners run about 100 sets of cups. Then he would do the final polishing, have them plated and sell them. Magic, Inc. does not spin their own cups. I have good reason to believe that National Magic had someone do their cups for them. I don't know who actually does the work for Ickle Pickle, but I think Steve Bender has someone he knows or hires do it for him. He may actually do it himself. Then there are all of those cups from Asia. They really haven't hurt the cups and balls market. If they had, the Phoenix cups would have driven the price of the Bertram and Charlie Miller cups down. They haven't. Paul Fox cups have also steadily risen in price. Those smooth silver Sherwoods are actually scarcer than the engraved ones! I wouldn't take less than $3K for mine. There are far fewer of them than there are Bertram cups. Mine aren't for sale, though. People are holding on to their cups. I know fellow in Denver who has a set of PF/DD chick cups. He is waiting until he sees the price get really high. His heirs will sell them off cheap. The thing that has made the PF/DD cups so costly is that so many famous cups and balls workers favored them. Frank Garcia used them. So did Tommy Wonder. Michael Ammar used them. I could list the famous people who used them, but it's of no real use. They are either waiting for them to be worth another $500 a set, or they are hoping they can use them for their child's college fund. So, while the cups are out there, they aren't on the market.
"The Swatter"
Founder of CODBAMMC My Chickasaw name is "Throws Money at Cups." www.cupsandballsmuseum.com |
Mad Jake Inner circle All the voices in my head helped me make 2200 Posts |
RNT II started spinning their own when we took over. Mike Brazill was using a company in Missouri for the CNC work for the Foxy II's, Foxy I's. Since our engraving shop had milling machines already in place for signage we started doing our own milling <cnc> work for our coin boxes and other brass, stainless products.
The original Montis, Don Alan cups and others were spun by a company in Chicago, since then we retooled everything in shop from hardwood, then once we spun the final prototype we send the wood block out to be cut from steel, with some of our items we cut our blocks right here from aluminum. All our polishing is also done in house, the only usual outsource as many know is our Chrome plating. If you want your company to die off quickly or turn out inferior crap, let another company do your work, if you want control, you have to keep it all in house as much as possible. We use technology to our advantage here, a lot of prototypes are milled from aluminum or wood and then 3-D scanned, turned into wireframe, cut again and then modified by hand on a lathe to the specs we want, then scanned one more time and the final tweaks made prior to making the final block. Jim Riser does it the good ol' fashion way, by hand from start to finish, hats off to Jim for that, it's rare these days. We've been accused of out sourcing our spinning, too funny since we turn tooling in 5 days from start to finish and generally have a workable prototype within 10 days. Ask Dr Schweid, the President of JESMagic, he's been waiting on duplicate tooling for almost 9 months to a year now from a machining shop. There is virtually no item we can't make in house when it comes to fabricating. Collectors that are well known are seen bidding hard and heavy on the auction sites, those of us who don't mind being out in the open leave ourselves actually as sitting ducks, there are a lot of bidders out there that drive up the bids because they know we will continue to bid until we win if we really want something. They have no itention of winning, they are just out to cost us money, it's not a myth, it happens all the time to a lot of us. The private collectors or silent collectors go through specific dealers that handle vintage and collectible items. We are a lot like the young generation now with their Yugio cards, if you have one that someone else wants bad enough you are willing to pay for it and pay high, if you want it bad enough. Hell, my one son sold 1 card for 385.00, a trading card that isn't but maybe 1 month old. The children today are like us when we buy cups. I have no problem bidding against Bill Palmer and going high on an item and Bill is the same way. Who wants it more is what the bottom or actually top price will dictate. Something is only as valuable as the one who wants it. Fortasse you should know this from a recent run of auctions we battled out over some Gazzo cups A lot of people and collectors take it personally, it's nothing personal, it's all about the cups. Todays win of 2025.00 for Bertram cups, may dip to 700.00 tommorow, but may go as high as 3K maybe. Pete was modest and only asked 1500.00 for his set, some people are greedy Some are humble Bottom line, collectors dictate the cup prices in the market place, but there are new collectors entering the game every day, some bow out quietly when they see the prices and never even bid, others jump in eyes wide open and seek the thrill of the win on auction sites. It's a lot like gambling Jake
Licensed Steve Dusheck Manufacturer and distributor visit www.airshipmagic.com
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Bill Palmer Eternal Order Only Jonathan Townsend has more than 24312 Posts |
Jake:
I'm glad to learn that you are doing all your own spinning and CNC work. That's excellent news. And you are right about the guys who bid the prices up. I have to be very careful when I bid, because if I bid on something just to fill a spot in the museum, there will be a dozen guys who will assume that I know something about it that they don't, and they will bid it through the roof. I should add that sometimes they are right! Sometimes, bidding is a real crapshoot, though. I know of a couple of times that I have been double-teamed to get a cup price high.
"The Swatter"
Founder of CODBAMMC My Chickasaw name is "Throws Money at Cups." www.cupsandballsmuseum.com |
Richard Evans Inner circle 1379 Posts |
Quote:
On 2006-07-14 21:37, fortasse wrote: Some owners bought their cups as workers and have no idea that their cups would fetch a high price at auction because they're not aware of the collecting game. Although some of these rarer sets appear at auction, you'll have noticed that these are often sold by a select group of sellers (Fortasse - you've already highlighted the big players). Also, because a lot of the older cups were used as 'workers' (as they were intended !) - there are sometimes very limited numbers of cups in fine/mint condition. A good example of this are the Burtini cups. This also might explain the scarcity of the Connie Haden cups - they're quite light and maybe some of the 'working' sets just didn't stand-up to the test of time. I'd be interested to know what other people think. Richard
I have six locks on my door all in a row. When I go out, I only lock every other one. I figure no matter how long somebody stands there picking the locks, they are always locking three. Elayne Boosler
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Bill Palmer Eternal Order Only Jonathan Townsend has more than 24312 Posts |
This is very true. For example, I have a set of P&L cups that belonged to Mike Rogers. He whanged the tar out of them. Or look at the PF/DD cups that belonged to Gazzo. They were underwater at least once. He had no idea when he bought them that they would ever be worth more than he paid for them.
The Connie Haden cups are a particularly interesting set. Only a few sets were made, the estimate being around 50 sets. Far fewer than that have survived, and only because the owners of those sets too very good care of them. Very few of us will let people know that we have them. I know where three sets are. There are more. I should add that on the Allesi auction, so far there have been two sets of cups. One was a set of Riser Jumbos, the other a set of Ireland cups. I know where the Ireland cups went. The Risers are still available. Also, Ron has a set of those on his site for only $125 more than Jim's retail. I think they will stay there a while.
"The Swatter"
Founder of CODBAMMC My Chickasaw name is "Throws Money at Cups." www.cupsandballsmuseum.com |
RiserMagic Veteran user 361 Posts |
For those interested in such things...
Traditionally chucks for metal spinning have been screwed directly on to the lathe spindle. This was true for whatever the spinning chuck material was. An interesting fact about lathe spindles is that they do not all run to the same "true". What this means is that a spinning chuck from one lathe may not run true on a second lathe. I own a half dozen spinning lathes and the chucks for each lathe are kept with that lathe. I can not switch a chuck from one lathe to another. The difference in concentricity may only be a few thousandths of an inch; but this is enough to make it impossible to do a quality spinning with this amount of wobble in the chuck. For this reason I like to actually turn my spinning chucks directly on the lathe the chuck will be used with. This is traditional with wooden spinning chucks. The later spinning lathes like my large Haag lathe offered compounds as accessories for turning steel chucks directly on the lathe. This concentricity problem is multiplied whenever spindle adaptors are used - which is virtually all of the time. I very often free turn my steel chucks using a large hand held tool similar to a wood lathe tool. This allows free flowing curves and more gentle designs in the chuck shape. CNC can replicate this motion. A perfectly concentric spinning chuck can be turned that will not run true on a spinning lathe due to lathe spindle differences, adaptors, etc. This is why I always at least finish turn my chucks on the actual spinning lathe to be used for the job at hand. I often do the rough cuts on my Sheldon metal lathe. I prefer and virtually always make and use steel spinning chucks. I do not like to use wood or nylatron (plastics) for chucks. In my spinning I would melt the nylon types and the wood chucks do not hold the desired tolerances. That being said, I will say also that the chuck for my Riser Jumbo Cups is turned from solid brass. It was going to be a prototype chuck; but held up so well that I still am using it. In practice I prefer a spinning chuck to be at least as hard or firm a material as the metal being spun. I have a few aluminum spinning chucks that were quickly made up for short run items; but aluminum chucks can present their own set of problems. Metal against metal can have some strange effects. If an aluminum disc is spun on an aluminum chuck and the two metals come in contact with a little twisting motion, they will virtually weld themselves together. If this happens while spinning an item, the item will be welded to the chuck and the chuck may well need to be remachined. The same problem does not happen if a different metal is spun on to the chuck. The same metal against itself presents the problems. This is why plain bearings are made from a softer metal that the rotating shaft - to prevent such galling. Just a little metal spinning trivia... Jim |
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