A recent ‘fresh meat purchase’, with the Lyon being stalked by menacing hyenas during a frenzied Ebay auction!
This delightful uncommon travel set ticks all my boxes – a lovely consistent patination, with nice chunky pegs on the pieces, about half a centimetre thick. The flawed board has a sliding drawer that houses the pieces pretty well. My purchase has a rather damaged board – not an easy restoration project, but no matter, as it’s not easy to get these central European pegged ‘coffee house’ style sets. The seller from Hungary (ALBORELO) offered excellent photos of the board’s damage so I received no ugly surprises when the well-packed item arrived. The king minus the peg is close to 5 cms high.
I believe in sensible dating of antique chessmen, as to some collectors getting very old sets is a must, and best of luck to them, but they will cost them a lot more from their purses. These European sets are delightful, but once hooked the collector can become an angler – internet dealers prey, and having a collection comprising of only Staunton chessmen won’t do.
The current reluctance of Ebay to deny buyers the right to give honest negative feedback comments, by removing them is a brutal ‘Big Brother’ practice – sellers who satisfy deserve praise, and to be criticised when appropriate- so much for democracy from a US owned business…
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