(prologue: I had lost the whole story of the sale of Jeff’s entire collection … very disconcerting situation for me … my yoyos are the materialization of some of my desires and moments in my life, thinking about giving them away would be like give away pieces of my experience … an idea that I can’t even formulate … I congratulate you for having given a home to those objects.)
My thought: I find engravings very important on a yoyo but only if they make sense and communicate something more that the same object cannot communicate.
I have already talked about it in the past, the concept behind the first (not very first) YYRs for me was a great added value and was conveyed by the engraving, “the producer” “meets” “the player” and from this event “the model” was born … this gave a great complete meaning to the object … when this thing was lost my vision towards the YYR (which however remains the brand that fascinated me most) it became quite blurred, this for say how important those engravings were in my eyes.
Other examples … the 888 is in some ways an icon of this world, an excellent object for that time but, would it have become in the same way if there hadn’t been models with particular and desirable engravings!!! (Jason Lee, Higby, Raven, Celtic, ocho ocho ocho … and the list could go on for several lines).
But I repeat it depends on the context and I do not think that the engraving can in any way be an added value for the future identifiability of an object … I have always loved the Caribou precisely because they had no engravings … I remember the last runs of the Chiefs with the indisane tent engraved … ugly, in my opinion. or I see many models that have engravings that have no relevance or connection with the object they are on, at which point it is better not to put them at all.
Moreover, if an object is likely to be forgotten for not having an identification engraving, the problem is either the object, which has nothing particular to be remembered, or it is ours, that we possess something that we do not deserve to possess.
This is how I see it.
I own engraved and unengraved yo-yos. My brain is full of a lot of stuff, apparently the model name for an unengraved yoyo isn’t something that always makes the cut. There was one yoyo in my collection that I couldn’t remember the name of. I knew who designed it, so I sent him a picture and apologized for not remembering the name. He was gracious about it, but, I felt like a tool as this guy put his heart, talent and experience into creating something, and I forgot it. It was almost like I remembered his older children’s names, but, couldn’t remember the youngest and last of his kids names. Engraving would have prevented that. (Although, I’m not advocating for tattooing names on children).
I am sure he was happy you even still HAD his yoyo. The real work goes into the design. I think the name of the yoyo is an afterthought in most cases. Does anyone really start with a name and build a yoyo based on that name? Just askin’!
Yes no engravings or funny designs just better looking I do like on my bimetals like topyo duncan they add the model name on the rim’s and that’s it that’s a very sleek look
Sometimes I really like engravings - sometimes not. On my own designs I usually like to have some sort of clue what it is so that folks can identify it in 5, 10 years.