EnumeroCribbageboards.com State of the Union for 2011

State of the States Sold In

2011 saw me pick up four more states. I’m up to 45 states sold. I’m still missing these 5 states: Arkansas, Delaware, Nevada, Okalahoma, Wyoming. And I believe Enumero Cribbage boards are now in China as well.

A Documentary on Koa

I saw this really fun little documentary about Koa (a beautiful and very distinctive wood native to Hawaii) and I was quite impressed to see that a full size Koa tree (that had blown over and uprooted itself in a storm) had a street value of about $100,000. One single tree had a market value of $100,000! I think the guy was inflating the price a little bit, but still Koa is by no means cheap. It typically sells for $25 (or more)/board foot. Koa I’ve used, I’ve gotten from Bruce over at www.notablewoods.com. Bruce graciously sells me the miscellaneous pieces of Koa that Luthiers might not be able to use. Bruce has a very nice write-up about Koa at this link.  http://www.notablewoods.com/pages/koa.html. The last batch of 25 or so Koa slices I bought from Bruce, I made 30 boards from. I don’t waste Koa. I even made 3 of the boards (Famous Literary Rejects II Series) from the cut-offs from other Koa boards.  If you’re looking for beautiful luthier wood, Bruce is your guy! In the late summer/early fall I got another great box of Koa cut-off miscellaneous pieces. This time I went with the $50 box and I was not disappointed!  The new box should keep me busy for a while. When finished, Koa imparts a warm rich glow.

Calling All Cribbage Board Collectors

For those of you wanting to collect Enumero Cribbage Boards, I replaced my templates page with a page dedicated to Cribbage Board Collectors. Essentially the pages are a year by year inventory of sold boards with links to the picture of the board and the series the board belongs to. It’s similar to the Sold-Out page, but boards are shown in the chronological order in which they were sold.

Since the vast majority of my boards have been sold via the mighty and powerful Internet, I have, at the very least an email address of the person who bought a board. If you see a board you would like to add to your collection, drop me an email, and I will forward your request to the owner. If the owner is open to the idea of parting with their board, I will provide the owner with your email address, at which point I step out of the picture and let the two parties hash out the details and decide among themselves a selling price, shipping arrangements, etc.

If you are successful in pursuing your board, you can also let me know that you are the new owner and I will update my records to reflect this fact.

Speaking of Similar Sounding Domain Names…

When I first registered my domain, I also registered the non-pluralized version of it as well. Well I let the singular version registration slide (I didn’t renew it), partly because I’m cheap and partly because I wanted to see if someone else would grab it and try to resale it to me at some point.

Well that experiment only took 2 years to complete. In late June of 2011, I started getting emails offering me to the chance to bid on a domain name I previously registered.

They very kindly offered me first crack at buying back my own domain name like so:

“ENUMEROCRIBBAGEBOARD.COM has been flagged as a premium domain and we expect it to sell quickly. Since you received a priority notice from us, you will be given first chance to acquire this domain.”

I’m not sure when getting 5-8 hits a day (a dozen hits on a good day), qualified a website as premium domain. Personally, I think they’re setting the bar pretty low.  Keep in mind that it’s the non-pluralized version.

Playing Favorites

As long as I’ve been making boards, I’ve noticed a tendency that in any given series of boards, one board always seems to stand out just a little bit more than the other boards in a given series.

In 2011, I’ve decided to give into this urge to denote what I think is the standout board in any given series and started adding an inlaid circle (similar to the inlaid skunk marker dot) on the short edge of the board, on on the opposite side of the peg hole.

But you may ask, how can I, the discriminating cribbage board buyer know if a given board for sale, is in fact your favorite board in a series, since I only show the board face (top of the board) in the picture.

And my answer is “Easy, just look for the dot next to the board name on the “For Sale Page.” This will indicate what I think is the stand out board for that series.

For example, in the “Human vs Machine in Game Play – 6 Notable Examples,” there was a board titled “Cribbage” denoting Hal’s Crib vs. The Rest of the World and next to it is a little “o” in parens – like so: (o).

And since my selling prices generally correlates to how much I like a particular board, the favorite board will, in most instances, be more a little bit more expensive than other boards in the same series.

Why I Love Wikipedia

Back in 2008, I did a small series titled “Fictional Elements of the Universe – Series I” implying that there would be more elements. At the time, the list of fictional elements on Wikipedia was a bit short. Like the list of Saturn Moons, which was only 35 when I originally did that series, the list of fictional elements has grown significantly!  As of this writing, they have mapped 62 moons around Saturn and 100+ fictional elements.

I love Wikipedia because it’s an endless source of information and inspiration for series ideas and names.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fictional_elements,_materials,_isotopes_and_atomic_particles

Recycled Boards

I had about 15 or so old boards floating around the shop for the last several years. They were not sellable due to serious cosmetic flaws, blown out holes, badly sanded through inlay, etc. Not sure what to do with them, I kept them. This year, I found a new way to recycle old boards. Use the old board as a new board blank! It was a elegantly simple solution as to what to do with blown out boards. The net result is that the board is tad thicker and there is some extra inlay on the bottom side, but other than that, they look like a normal board.

New & Improved

I made some thicker boards in 2011. To keep the proportions nice, I started doing 1” caps.

Drill Templates

2011 saw me finally get around to doing a proper inventory of my templates. I got rid of duplicates, etc. and finally have a good handle on what I have. I got a bug up my butt and created about 15-20 new designs (mostly curves and street mixtures) and I’m up to 69 unique drill pattern templates. I suspect there are probably thousands of combinations for drill templates and I’ve only begun to scratch the surface. Needless to say, I’m pretty well covered in terms of being able to find a template for any size of board. My supply of inexpensive plastic finally really ran out and so I stopped selling templates again. I won’t say I that will never sell templates again, but it may just be a while before I circle back around to to selling them again.

Big Releases

A couple of years ago I did a big release of about 50+ boards in several series all at once. After I completed it, I said I’d never do that again. Well, apparently my own advice is fell on deaf ears and in July 2011 I did even a BIGGER release of 87 boards in 12 series.

Reward

A board called Banjo Guitar was sold to a client in Southern California. It went MIA off my mailbox – a first! It never even made it into the USPS tracking system. Consistent with the USPS laws on Postal Theft, there could be up to a $10,000 reward for information leading to arrest and conviction of the perpetrator. More likely, it just got eaten by a USPS processing machine and/or stolen by a USPS employee. It’s likely it would not have gotten processed in the USPS system until it got to Southern California – based on the information I see for the replacement board I sent out. Don’t know. The USPS is BIG, BLACK hole, that happens to work really well, MOST of the the time. Where else can you can send a package for $5 (from your front door) to someone else’s front door 3000 miles away and know with 100% certainty that it arrived there (and in 3 days or less) After 5 years and shipping 600+ items off my mailbox, I had to come up with a new shipping strategy.

California Ghost Towns IV

Normally, I wouldn’t mention a specific series, but this one had a bit of bad luck associated with it, so it bears mentioning

When I was drilling out the holes for the “legs” on these boards, I was using a large ¾” Fortsner bit on a hand drill. For whatever reason (most likely stupid user error) the drill jumped and landed on my left thumb and in an instant, it cut/drilled/managled a ¼” square section out of the center of my finger nail. And yes, it hurt alot. Also, I broke about 6 or 7 titanium bits while drilling these boards. It seemed like every board broke a bit. This is notable, since I’ve literally drilled a 100+ boards using the sam drill bit, so breaking a bit is a very rare occurrence for me.

Varnish

Like many woodworkers, I have been somewhat terrified of trying my hand at a varnish finish – the exception being some of the California Ghost Town series – where I just slapped a couple of coats of varnish on and called it a day.

So I finally tried it and just like Mikey (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Mikey), I liked it. There is some technique involved with the wet sanding in between coats, but I’m starting to get the hang of it. And it really makes the less interesting looking board faces, pop.

Shop Tour

A very nice gentleman (a Crib Enthusiast who’s currently working in China, but who has ties to the Bay Area) and his girlfriend stopped by the shop. While my shop is so small, giving a tour of it would prove challenging under the best of circumstances, they did procure a few boards and graciously bought my remaining supply of colored wood pegs.

10,000 Pegs Later

And speaking of China, I purchased 10,000 silver pegs directly from China – a minimum order when buying anything from China. These are nice functional little silver pegs, nothing flashy. I got a good deal on them and once they shipped, they got to my front door in 2 days (from China, over the New Year’s Holiday) courtesy of DHL Express.

And the final count for 2011 was…

I sold 118 boards and sold out 13 Series in 2011. Overall, a decent year. I broke my personal best of 99 boards sold from 2010 (previous highest count from last year). In the numerically ironic department, the last board sold for the year was “Apollo 13” from the NASA Moon Bible Missions Series.  It sold for $1.00. It also sold out the series and that series was the 13^th series sold out for 2011.

Cost Cutting Measures

I’m getting away from including the nicer pegs with all of my boards. Most boards now come with the little silver pegs, which are perfectly nice little pegs. Only the higher end boards will get the good pegs and only the REALLY higher end boards will get the really FANCY pegs. Older boards are still coming with the nice pegs,simply because I’m too lazy to re-shoot the boards with the cheaper pegs.  My margins are just so small (or non-existent and/or negative for a lot of boards), I just can’t justify giving out $1.50 or $2.25 worth of pegs (my wholesale cost) on a $10 or $15 board. The little silver pegs are an order of magnitude cheaper than the good pegs. Costco gave me a break when they put their brick of Bicycle Playing cards on sale this year for about $12 a brick. I stocked up and when I went back to get more, they were sold out. During the NON-holiday season, I include a pack of cards on boards that cost $31 or more. During the holiday season, every board gets a pack of cards with it (plus a 29% off etsy coupon).

Final Random Thoughts for 2011

I got a few repeat customers (so that was nice) and I drove right past board #400.  I tried A LOT of new styles of drill patterns this year, so it was fun to mix things up. I didn’t really do that many tournament style boards this year. Right at the end of 2011 I released a series of ACC style tournament boards (some with 9/64” holes) – which didn’t haven't done much. I don’t advertise in the ACC newsletter or try and promote my boards with ACC players or local clubs.

Looking ahead to 2012

I would expect to see A LOT of Koa boards in 2012. I have about ~90 Koa board blanks glued up and in the middle of being drilled. They’re always a good seller. Zebrawood boards are in the works, along with a maple/cocobolo combination board. I have a TON of Cocobolo tournament boards I just need to finish. I will be releasing 3 new point count boards. “Manchester” style boards (90 point Crib Boards) and 7-Card Boards which come in 2 flavors: The 150 point board (American Version of 7 Card Crib) and the 180 Point (English Version of 7 Card Crib).

Chess Boards

With any luck I will finish the remaining 3 chess boards that have been sitting on the shop floor for 2+ years and finally start some new Chess Boards in 2012. The new chess boards will be made like the cribbage boards - pretty woods glued to stable substrates. Some of my early chessboards (made strictly with solid hardwoods, warped).