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MY NEW CHESS SET COLLECTION PART 1

Looking back on my old blog posts, I am reminded of the last time I displayed my chess set collection about 4 years ago. Gee how time flies. I am once again rejuvenated in my quest to have the prominent chess-playing sets which have made their mark in World Championships and illustrious tournaments in my collection.

This addictive yet soul-satisfying hobby was rekindled with the discovery of Ebay through a friend who managed to get some real bargains for vintage sets. So I tried my luck.


My first succesful acquisition cost me GBP40 for a 4" King Lardy made of boxwood and rosewood. There's a soft spot for the Lardy with its elegantly shaped Knights and dainty mitres of the Bishops not found in the current FIDE tournament sets today. Since then several good bargains came and my Lardy collection now counts to 8, from 2.75" to 4.25" Kings.


The Dubrovnik was a favourite but the NOJ version is simply out of my budget. So I settled for this Indian repro which costs around SGD80 and free shipping.

This Spanish Indajesa set came as a result of me losing a bid for another set. It came with a nice board though used. These pieces were the ones used back in the 90s Linares tournaments where Karpov, Anand and Kasparov were competing then.


These 2 sets were obtained from Germany. The one above is a petite glass eye Knight set while the one below was a good find - a Bayerwald design used in the Leipzig Olympiad in 1960.

The Bohemia was used in the Siegen Olympiad. This one is a unique Dragon shaped Knight which is rather rare and comes with a nice board.


I bought this art set as the pieces were crafted from the best of the Lardy (the Knight), the Dubrovnik (the Rook) and the King (from the Brazilian Dirk Dagobert) with a Padauk and Maple board.


The Romanian Hungarian was another one of my must haves, this one was a copy from ChessBazaar.



The Soviet GM3 set was the main set of choice in most tournaments in the USSR in the 70s and 80s after the Botvinnik-Flohr set and the 1960 GM set which was used in the World Championships held in the Soviet Union from 1951 till 1966.


The Lardy was marketed in the US by a few game-manufacturing companies namely Cavalier, Drueke, E.S Lowe. The above is a Cavalier wooden 3.25" King. Great to do analysis with.



Turning to US produced sets, the one above is a wooden Drueke Player's Choice repro from the House of Staunton. Now the one below is the tenile plastic Player's Choice 35 from Drueke.


This was the set used in the 1971 match between Fischer and Larsen in Denver.

More to come...


Comments

  1. garyJanuary 26, 2021 at 1:02 PM

    Very cool, thank you for sharing!

    ReplyDelete
  2. sound67February 7, 2021 at 3:04 AM

    Nice collection. If you'd like to have a look at mine (I buy mostly repros though), you'll find it here: http://www.theviolinproject.de/schachsets.html

    ReplyDelete

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