New information comes to light all the time if you are a cue collector it seems. This is one of the pleasures of the hobby as far as I am concerned.

Until recently, I was only aware of four Sidney Smith badged cues, then last week I discovered a fifth.

I am not one hundred percent sure which cue is the earliest as only two out of the five are dated.

I shall refer to them as 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. For the purposes of this piece I will try to describe them in a sensible order.

1. Number one is the Sidney Smith cue made by Burroughes and Watts, this cue appears both in Ash and Maple. This cue often has a Birdseye Maple front splice tipped with a green Maple veneer. I have only seen hand spliced versions of this cue so far.
2. Two iIs the black butted Sidney Smith Gold Cup cue that was made to commemorate the first competitive total clearance in competition in 1939. The break referred to on the badge of this cue was 136 and took place in the Gold Cup Snooker Championships and of course was made by Sidney Smith himself. This cue does not have a facing splice but is a completely black butted, hand-spliced cue.
3. The third cue is the Sidney Smith picture badged cue and comes in both hand and machine-spliced versions. The butts on these cues are made from Rosewood with a veneer made from Ebony with thin lines of Maple running along it.
4. Number four is an interesting cue, as it has so far only appeared in a machine-spliced version with a Rosewood butt with a facing splice made from Maple with lines of Ebony running through the splice. This cue was made to commemorate Sidney Smith’s victory in the United Kingdom Billiards Championships in 1947 and 1948.
5. The fifth cue is as above but comes in both hand and machine-spliced versions and commemorates Mr Smith’s win in the UK Billiards Championships of 1947, 1948 and 1949. The fact is that Mr Smith won the tournament once but was not required to defend the title for two years, this meant that he was credited as the holder of the tournament for three years in total.

Peradon Limited made all but the cue that I have described as number one on the above list clearly well into the 1940’s.

I bought a 1948 badged Sidney Smith cue from a mature gentleman a few years ago who insisted that the cue had belonged to his father and that it had been in his family since the 1930’s, I tried to point out that the badge disproved this but he wouldn’t have it. I bought the cue and my parting words to him were “perhaps the cue was made by a clairvoyant as the date of Sidney Smith’s win in the UK Billiards Championships was ten years in the future at least!” He just smiled and said “maybe so!” But he still apparently failed to comprehend my meaning, I hope that he sold me the cue that he meant to.

I currently own three different Sidney Smith cues, the rarest one is the Gold Cup Cue as it is the only one of its kind that I have seen.

I used to have the Burroughes and Watts version but sold it to buy a nice Ye Olde Ash cue, I would be happy to get hold of another as they are quite a handsome cue in either Ash or Maple. I am also quite happy with my machine-spliced 1947/1948 UK Billiards Sidney Smith cue, as this cue was clearly only available for the one year. I have only seen the one so if you know of others please let me know.

David Smith
Cues n Views

© Copyright April 2002 David Smith

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