Story of a stolen Joss West...

[bigshooter]

/ccboard/images/graemlins/ooo.gifI'm not sure why this even popped into my head but about 15 years ago I had a friend that worked in a pool hall and some strangers came through and played some pool, about an hour after they left my friend received a frantic phone call from one of them saying he had left his cue in the case under a table.

Well as luck would have it, the cue was still there but the only problem was my friend lied to the guy and said he didn’t see it.

So now my friend has a NICE Joss West (very fancy, tons of inlays) and it’s hot as a pistol so he offers it to me for $75.00, YES $75.00 and I turned him down, I can’t play with a stolen cue no matter how nice it is so he ends up trading it to another guy I know for a set of golf clubs.

Now the problem is he’s afraid to play with it for the fact that the real owner might see him somewhere so he turns around and sells it to another guy that I also know but this guy is slightly smarter, he takes it to another cue maker and has it re-stained to a darker color,refinished and has a new wrap of a different color put on, cleans up the shaft, etc.

Last I knew he sold the cue for $1000.00 at a pool tournament to a guy that had no idea it was hot.

I’m not sure what the point of this story is except don’t leave your cue in a pool hall and if you do go back personally and check on it without telling anyone.

I left a Meucci original in a hotel in Colorado Springs one time and they sent it back to me. (Insert Meucci Jokes Here!) And I did have a guy attempt to steal my Joss in a room in Omaha one time but I caught him before he got out the door.

Anyway if you lost a Joss West in about 1989 I might be able to help you start tracking it down.

[RedHell]

I guess the point of your story is that the friend you had isn't to honest. I would probably count my fingers after shaking his hand if I were you....

[UWPoolGod]

Pretty shady. But then again it kind of happened to me. There was a kid...well 4 or 5 years older than me...that shot with a Schon cue and worked at Harvey's Billiards in Renton, WA. I also shot with a Schon Ltd and needed my tip replaced. He told me he would retip my cue for X amount of dollars since they retipped cues at the poolhall. So I left my shaft and called a week later and the kid said he had retipped it but it was at his house. What it was doing at his house I didn't know. But to make a long story short...he said he lost the shaft. So I talked to the owner and the owner gave me a Predator shaft out of his cue wall case and then made the kid give him his cues until he came up with the money for the price of the shaft. I was mad, and never really got used to the predator shaft so i got a Scruggs sneaky and sold the Schon Ltd to someone in PA for more that what I paid for it.

[bigshooter]

<blockquote><font class="small">Quote RedHell:</font><hr> I guess the point of your story is that the friend you had isn't to honest. I would probably count my fingers after shaking his hand if I were you.... <hr /></blockquote>

Yeah, Friend might have actually been too strong a word he was more of just a pool hall acquaintance, he worked the counter a lot and I shot against him in leagues but never hung out with him or anything and shortly after this he quit and I never saw him again anyway.