Thanks, it actually sounds better than it should.
I had a doctor that wouldn’t leave me alone about building one for his son, who was playing with my good friend Albert Castiglia at the time. I gave him a “go away don’t bother me kid” price of $800.00, he still wanted it. I still tried to put him off, he wanted it by October, three months away, for his son’s birthday, I said I’d try. He came back from the bar with a bottle of water for me, I took it and a check for the 800 bucks was wrapped around it. He wouldn’t take it back.
Good friends of mine, she wanted me to build one for her husband for Christmas, He played mine when they were down for the Key West Poker run. I told her it was too expensive, I explained to her I had already charged a guy $800, I didn’t think it was appropriate to change the price, it would have been unfair to the doctor. She didn’t care, she wanted me to build it and the money was not an object. I included some cool custom MOP inlay on his to try and make up for the high cost.
Thank God no one else wanted one. I really don’t want to get into building stuff for others. I’m retired and I plan on staying that way.
I’ll still do custom leather work for others, now and then, I don’t encourage it but a lot of people know I do decent work. Back in the 90s Chopped Motorcycles became a thing, a lot of people wanted to pay big money for a hacked up custom motorcycle. I was part of the motorcycle culture. My close friend and mechanic got me doing some custom work. A friend had me make a leather cigar holder for Billy Lane of Choppers Inc. He had me go with him when he gave it to Billy, I had tooled Billy’s image on it. He had me do a custom tooled seat for a build he did for this guy in Miami, Paul Cox was swamped with work at the time, I guess. So I got into that for a short period of time. I’ll still rebuild/cover a seat but it will be for a friend and only for a vintage motorcycle.
I guess an example would be appropriate. A hand bag I did, tooled leather, kangaroo liner and lacing.
