2nd Run!!! (2nd Shop)
Around this time the Caribou Blog was started: http://www.cariboublog.com/ The history of the 2nd run Peak should be archived and easy to find. Not so. Due a combination of upgrading of blog software, the purging of posts made by a certain “ex” employee, and the purging of all posts using the word “yoyo” (…sigh…), all pre-2010 posts on the blog are gone. The archive only goes back to January 2010. I contacted Chris to see if he has a data dump of the pre-2010 blog posts. It’s looking like they are gone for good. This is tedious, but I’m going to have to resort to searching my personal emails to be able to reconstruct the Peak history from early 2008 through the end of 2009. These dates may not be exact. And as this is when the Peak hit its production “stride” I may miss several of the production / limited Peak versions. My knowledge of what was released in Fool’s Gold versions is particularly weak. I’ll try my best. I apologize in advance.
Levi “eBay” 2nd Run Peaks!
Somewhere in mid-2008 the first 2nd run Peaks started coming out of the 2nd shop in very limited quantities and almost all of these went directly to Levi for paint and would ultimately end up on eBay as the “eBay” Peaks.
http://www.yoyonation.com/talk/index.php/topic,28418.0.html
6/3/2008 – eBay Round #1: #1 Plaid, #2 Blue with Orange
http://www.yoyonation.com/talk/index.php/topic,28790.0.html
6/9/2008 – eBay Round #2: #3 Black with Gold, #4 Green with Black Trees
http://www.yoyonation.com/talk/index.php/topic,29141.0.html
6/14/2008 – eBay Round #3: #5 Red Plaid with Black, #6 Brown with Orange
http://www.yoyonation.com/talk/index.php/topic,29443.0.html
6/19/2008 – eBay Round #4: #7 Black with 24 Carat Gold Leaf Lightning Bolt and Peak Logo, #8 Navy Blue with Lightning
http://www.yoyonation.com/talk/index.php/topic,30544.0.html
7/8/2008 – eBay Round #5: #9 Blue with Baby Blue Logo, #10 Brown with Pink Logo
http://www.yoyonation.com/talk/index.php/topic,31161.0.html
7/16/2008 – eBay Round #6: relisted #9, #11 Blue with Pink Logo/Fade, #12 Brown (butterscotch) Gold Fleck with Sparkle Gold Logo
http://www.yoyonation.com/talk/index.php/topic,31437.0.html
7/21/2008 – eBay Round #7: #13 Hand Textured with Logo, #14 Woodgrain with Black Logo
http://www.yoyonation.com/talk/index.php/topic,32985.0.html
8/12/2008 – eBay Iron Maiden
http://lh5.ggpht.com/_PpMEVvqsevk/TR3pggXBaSI/AAAAAAAAJsM/SIo2tlYdh1E/s800/Iron%20Maiden.jpg"
http://www.yoyonation.com/talk/index.php/topic,34992.0.html
9/16/2008 – eBay “Oh Canada Eh!!” (note: NOT the same as Chris’ 1st run, first ever Levi custom plaid “eh!”), Metallic Aqua with Slime Green Logo
http://www.yoyonation.com/talk/index.php/topic,35638.0.html
10/1/2008 – eBay Super Mario Bros.
http://www.yoyonation.com/talk/index.php/topic,38245.0.html
11/19/2008 – eBay Jawbreaker 1, Jawbreaker 2 (note: these are the only custom painted Peaks I know of to have the inner hubs specially painted… their hubs were textured/splatter painted. Jawbreaker 1 is also the only painted Peak I know of to have the mountain logo painted on both halves. I owned Jawbreaker 1 briefly. It arrived with a chip from customs. I should have kept it as it is rare because of the splatter painted inner hubs and the double logo. I’ve seen both Jawbreakers floated around recently… both are beat to heck.)
Jawbreaker 1:
Jawbreaker 2:
And the Jawbreakers ended the Levi painted “eBay” Peak era. In 2 short months 2nd run Peaks would hit production “stride” at the 2nd shop and after 2.5 years the Peak would no longer be “rare”.
China Peak!
http://www.yoyonation.com/talk/index.php/topic,37989.0.html
11/14/2008 - Chris puts up the one and only China Peak for sale. 3 halves were made. Chris held on to the extra half.
Levi custom painteds!
There are more of these than I care to go into detail about. RAN’s collection is very well known. I own Atari and Transformers custom Levi painted Peaks. Trevor’s all black with purple “outlined” logo is ever popular. The Vault Peak and Peakzilla are actually not Levi painted, but rather a very good attempt to reproduce Levi’s work. There are actually two Batman / Joker themed custom painteds.
I’ve kept a private photo album of all Levi painted Peaks I’ve come across here: http://picasaweb.google.com/benjustinbaker/Peaks#
There is a very good thread collection Levi Peak pictures here: http://www.yoyonation.com/talk/index.php/topic,41164.0.html
Preparing for large 2nd run production runs!
It had been over a year since Chris sent the 2nd shop the CAD program for the Peak and they still were unable to produce a Peak to Chris’ standard. The 2nd run Peak actually moved further away from the original concept first thought up by Chris and Paul. Although the 2nd shop was eventually able to remove vibe from the 2nd run Peaks, they did not have the same machinery / setup as the 1st shop. They were more of an “oil field” industrial shop. They weren’t suited for the finesse and tight tolerance to CAD designs that are required for yoyo production. Their production involved tool changes, which introduced the tool change “circle” that is found inside the hub of all 2nd run Peaks. There was no change in the CAD design from the 1st run to the 2nd run Peaks. All changes resulted in the 2nd shop’s loose “interpretation” of the CAD design. The intended goal weight was not hit. The 90 degree edge on the outer lip (which is the easiest way to tell a 1st run and 2nd run Peak apart) was also a 2nd shop unrequested design “enhancement”.
All this information can come out now. At the time though Chris could hardly go proclaiming “This new shop sucks and this Peak is nothing close to what I want.” Whereas Chris was not saying this publicly, Paul did not hold his tongue in sharing his opinion of the Peak. Paul had actually been unhappy with the production of even the 1st run Peaks and had long touted the only Peak that was THE PEAK as he intended was the prototype Peak. Paul and Chris’ friendship fell on some rough times because of CLYW and the Peak, so there’s no telling how much of Paul’s opinion of the Peak is based on fact and how much was influenced by hurt feelings. I, for one, have a hard time believing that anyone can be of the opinion that the prototype Peak is the best Peak version. Go back and read the laundry list of CAD design changes between the prototype Peak and the 1st run Peak. The prototype Peak needed to have its response groove widened to remove a “thud” and needed to be shimmed to get a gap wide enough for modern play. True, a fully modified and shimmed prototype is a beast, and that beast would eventually return… 3rd run Peaks are still a few pages away.
My friends and I knew the public 2nd run Peaks were coming. Production had been ramped up. The floodgates were soon to be open. We knew they had been machined for a while (mid-2008 Levi “eBay” Peaks) and had recently been making their way to Gruntbull for test colourways. Chris was moving anodizing of all CLYW yoyos to Gruntbull at this time and just like he had to get test colourways from Pioneer to decide on the 28 Stories finish, he had to start all over again with Gruntbull. First came solid color tests: 3 all blue and 3 all copper. These were sold privately. One of each had made it to my collection, although my copper I had to polish the rims of to remove scratches made when Trevor decided to “walk the dog” on playground gravel at the request of some children.
We had word there were 2nd runs coming to the CLYW store on 2/3/2009. That night I sent a text at 9:30PM CST saying “I’m tired. I’m going to bed. If Peaks drop, don’t text. CALL!” At 1:13AM CST on 2/4/2009 I get a text that reads “PEAKS!!!” followed be a phone call. Jumping up and refreshing the laptop on my nightstand already open to the CLYW store page, the 5 gold with light gold splash Peaks were up. So were the 20 magenta with lime green splash Peaks. I purchased one of each and by the time I finished checkout to return to the store page, the gold with light gold splash Peaks were sold out.
At this time Chris continued having Gruntbull do several small runs of test colourways searching for a colourway to make a large run of. Chris was holding back one of each of these test colourways for me:
- Gray fade, 10 made, fade was done in not so much a “fade” but jump from dark gray to light gray, i.e. kind of a fail.
- Orange with light gray splash, 15 or 20 made. Chris liked this colourway and decided this colourway would make up half of the production Sebastian Brock Peak, so he ordered up another 100 halves in this colourway. These early 15 or 20 came from a different machining batch than the 100 Sebastian Brock halves of this color. Due to small variation between every batch made by the 2nd shop, mixing and matching halves of any 2nd run Peak is not recommended unless you know the halves came from the same batch. Of the 15 or 20 made, Chris had 5 or 6 leftover at the time he sent the 100 Sebastian Brock Peaks to YYN. YYN sold 100 two-tone Sebby Peaks and 5 or 6 “all orange / gray splash”. These 5 or 6 “all orange / gray splash” are from this early test colourway run, so some lucky kids from YYN got to buy this rare test color Peak without even knowing it.
- Gray to baby blue color changing with orange splash, less than 10 made. Base color was supposed to be baby blue. Gruntbull fail. Came out in this muted gray which looked baby blue from certain angles. Actually pretty cool but accidental. Not something that could be requested / reproduced for a large run.
- Gold with black splash (Gold Nugget), 25 made. Most had unacceptable vibe (20+), so less than 10 are perfect / A-grade. As Chris was quickly falling into having a category of “B-Grade” yoyos and that term was already in use by YoYoFactory, Chris came up with the term “Fool’s Gold” to engrave on B-grade yoyos. As it was the Gold Nugget Peak that first needs a “B-grade” stamp of some kind, its name inspired the “Fool’s Gold” B-grade stamp, which is still in use by CLYW today.
- Burnt orange with gold splash (Iron Man), 35 made. Intended to go out to the weekly winners of the CLYW video contest. Unfortunately 25+ came back with unacceptable vibe and were engraved “Fool’s Gold”, making the 10 or less perfect / A-grades highly collectible. This also meant there was not enough perfect Iron Man’s to go out to each weekly contest winner… see next entry…
- Pewter with orange splash, 15 made. 3 sold to the public. 12 others were given to winners of the weekly CLYW video contest. This Peak has made the rounds as the “Lava Peak”. That was never an official name, but it’s out there, so… meh… One of these Peaks was intended to be given as the grand prize of the CLYW video contest. Iron Man Peaks were supposed to go to the weekly winners, and the best (grand prize) weekly winner would get one of these pewter with orange splash. As most of the Iron Man’s got stamped “Fool’s Gold”, these pewter with orange splash started going out to weekly contest winners. I don’t think there ever was a “grand prize” Peak awarded.