Early in Joe Gold's career in cue making, inlaid cues were a rarity. Gold's earliest cues featured exotic woods and daring contrasts of color and texture. His earliest cues also feature wooden decorative ring work; today all of his cues have 30 pieces of silver in the rings. This particular example features a handle of very highly figured curly maple, framed by two sections of Amaranth, commonly referred to as Purple Heart.

General Information About Joe Gold & Cognoscenti Cues-

Joe Gold began building cues in the early 1990s. His first shop was a humble workspace consisting of  good  (but minimal) equipment.The name of his cues, Cognoscenti, is a Latin term describing people who are "in the know." Gold's early cues were inlaid using a pantagraph machine, which is an overhead pin router where a scribe  follows a metal design template and replicates that design to scale on the cue stick. Today, Gold's cues utilize CNC technology to cut pockets and parts for inlays, although the actual inlay process is done by hand, by Joe himself. Gold's current shop is one of the most technically advanced cue shops in the world. His cues are some of the sought-after collectibles and many of his designs are stolen and copied by cheap production cues made abroad.