The History of Classy Cribbage

Growing up my parents frequently played Cribbage but for some reason it never piqued my interest. We played family games almost every night (TV time was very limited), which as it turns out was not such a bad thing. It was not until many years later that the game of Cribbage really sparked my interest; my wife grew up playing with her family and finally convinced me to give it a try, a few days later I was hooked. But.... playing on a cheap game board did not work well with my need for perfection. The game board we picked up at Target for $19.99, was made of pine at best, spray painted poorly, and had pegging holes that were 1/2 drilled and filled with paint. My utter and complete frustration every time we played started the wheels spinning. A few weeks after becoming a worthy adversary, sometime around 4:00AM (when I do my best inventing) I dreamt up the vision of what would be Classy Cribbage. It started with a desire to have a better flow of pegging, while the back and forth method worked, I felt that would be best left for trips to the office. So, after very little hours of sleep I sat down to AutoCAD and started designing a board that I felt had better flow and continuity. Once I had this great looking design on paper, the daunting tasks of what, where, and how remained. So I set off to locate a source for the game deck. After playing with several materials, aluminum seemed to make the most sense. It’s lightweight, extremely strong and rigid, can be machined and anodized to almost any color and will stand the test of time. Turns out it can be laser engraved very effectively as well. My original thought was to make the game board just one big chunk of aluminum, but after careful consideration it seemed cold and to lack the warm family game night feel a good game board should have. First thing I needed was some quality wood, and not the cheap pine that most boards are made of, but some quality, hardwoods, something that would finish up nicely and would sparkle as it sat in its downtime on your favorite game table. Something warm and rich that accented the beautiful hard aluminum nicely. There it was a nice box that the game deck would rest on. And... as I am never satisfied with mediocrity, the questions of what do you do with the deck of cards, game pegs, instructions arose. As necessity is the mother of all invention, I decided to take the game board to the next level and route out holes for each component and finish them in a beautiful 5-coat Deft finish. Then came the pegs; standard plastic or wood pegs were just not going to work, how could I ever take this piece of art I was designing and cheap out in the end. So nothing less than solid machined metal would do. So I decided to go with Brass, Copper and Stainless Steel for my pegs. They made the most sense since the colors were different enough as to not confuse your pegs with your opponents'. Putting them in the highest quality velvet bag I could find only seemed the perfect end to what started as frustration and matured into a beautiful piece of art. I certainly hope you enjoy your Classy Cribbage Board! What Makes Our Boards Unique? One Word “ Quality ”!