My dad had always been into railroads and model trains - the more elaborate, the better - for as long as I could remember. He was also essentially a quadriplegic which, by the time I was of driving age, meant I was into model trains. That last part is a bit of a lie. I fucking hate modeling as it was forced labor. If he wanted it built, that meant I built it. If he wanted to go see a display, that meant I drove. But the trains themselves were cool, and it also meant time spent with dad, and that's not nothin'.
Oh, he was also a fuckin' cheap bastard.
Not long after dad passed a few years ago I was admiring some of the train paintings he had up around the home, and then it occurred to me. Cheap chips. Railroading. Time to build a set to honor pops. I pulled out a set of 700 chips and shipped them up to
@Gear . I had no design in mind yet, but I knew these were going to have shaped inlays (one does not buy solids on an uncommon mold and send them to Gear just to get circles cut out of them), and I figured there had to be some kind of railroad tied to a diamond theme...right? Please God of Google let there be a diamond-themed railroad....
*furiously types searches into Google*
BINGO
I found the Black Diamond menu image and the hook was set. I started considering designers. I'd worked with J5 multiple times and wanted something a bit different. P5Woody wasn't availble and I'd worked with him before, too, so I hit up Quicksilver. We went back and forth for a few iterations and we had something going for the obverse, but I could never land on an image or design that I wanted for the reverse. I finally felt like we could go no further and put the project on pause. Quicksilver did his best, but I wasn't giving him enough to put together the full package. That's not his fault at all.
A couple years later I went to a gem show with my wife and some friends out in Quartzite, AZ (look it up...it's a dunghole!) and one of the booths sold earrings and jewelry made out of cast-off, broken shards of railway diningware. While my wife was looking at earrings I asked the proprietor if the Black Diamond happened to have any such diningware. They pulled out a reference book, riffled some pages, and ultimately came to the first plate depicted above. FINALLY! I had the concept for the reverse! A few days later I had enough images from the web to continue the design. This time I reached out to hall-of-fame designer designer Toby. He was intrigued by the project, but there was some technical limitation that prevented him from putting together the design I wanted. Foiled once more, I continued looking for a designer and reached out to
@timinater . He was game for it so I fired him the reference images. Within a few days he sent me back some initial proofs, and I'll be damned if he didn't nail the reverse on the first try. Like, literally, the first try. The only thing that really needed tweaked on the reverse was the background color. I was laboring over chosing a font for the denoms on the front so that took a little while longer - I probably sent him about 12-15 font references before I finally found one that I was happy with. Huzzah! The design was complete!
Time to get the art assets up to Gear and let him work his magic, right?
You would think, but no. I sat on them. For over a year. I even let Chris know that I had them...just never sent them. Why? Honestly, I'm not sure. I think a part of me was afraid of somehow screwing it up. I really only had one shot at this. Eventually I came to a point where I said, "You've measured for five years...I think it's time to cut once." So the assets were sent and I got in line. A month or two later, I received the most beautiful message a chipper can receive..."Out for Delivery."
And I opened the boxes....and they were perfect. Goddamn perfect.
