George Balabushka - Prominence

Prominence

It is estimated that Balabushka produced between 1,000 and 1,200 cues during his lifetime. However, by the mid 1960s, forged Balabushka cues started circulating in the market, as he was already recognized as the premier cue maker of the era, referred to as "the Stradivarius of cuemakers". Balabushka and his cues achieved much wider recognition after being prominently featured in Martin Scorsese’s 1986 film, The Color of Money (the sequel to the classic 1961 film The Hustler).

In the film, Tom Cruise’s character, Vincent Lauria, is presented with a beautiful cue by Paul Newman's character, Fast Eddie Felson. Vincent takes the cue, his reverence obvious, and is told by Eddie "it's a Balabushka." After this, Balabushka's name became associated by the general public with highly-valued and rare cues. The cue actually used in the film was, however, not a genuine Balabushka, but a Joss Cues model J-18 (renamed the N-07), custom-made to look like a Balabushka. The filmmakers feared that any cue used might get damaged during filming; especially in light of a scene set in a pool room where Cruise's character rapidly whirls the cue around in time to the song Werewolves of London. An original Balabushka was thus considered too valuable to be risked in the production.

Original Balabushka cues with verified provenance may realize tens of thousands of dollars at auction. In 1994, for example, a Balabushka was purchased by a collector for $45,000. In a 1998 Syracuse Herald-Journal article a collection of 30 original Balabushkas cues and 6 Gus Szamboti cues was estimated to be worth 2 million dollars, the cues said to be the equivalent in the cue collecting world of Rembrandts and van Goghs respectively. There are, however, many fake Balabushka cues in existence. Complicating matters, in the 1980s with the permission and license of his surviving family, a line of Balabushka replicas began to be manufactured in large quantities by the Adam Custom Cue Company.