This vintage large chess set probably dates from 1970’s – 2000, and was a recent ‘fresh meat’ purchase from ‘old games of chess’, whilst I was doing my eBay rounds but not selling. So I contacted the Count Victor Stefan, residing at Castle Dracula (my little joke) , and I asked him how many pints of my blood for the set? His reply was……….. all of it – ouch!
This absolute monster of a chess set was purchased for a pretty fair price judging by the prices of wooden sets these days, but I believe it is of Czech origin – his pretty accurate description was:-
‘The king is 29 cm approx. and the board is 127 x 96.5 cm approx
The board is knitted, well made, and can be easily folded or rolled up for storage.
White king has the cross broken, some pieces have marks and the box is a bit damaged’
With these larger ‘fun’ sets, I used the telling acid test for piece stability and placed the woven board rug on some rather uneven grass and the pieces stayed erect, plus compared it to a recent auction purchase of a 9.5 cms king unweighted early 20th century Czech set.
Such a set would look great in a quality hotel as a fun thing for guests to play with – the pieces are not heavy, nor am I aware of the wood type. The pieces are of a similar size to a set seen recently at a local Glasgow West End bric a brac/antiques centre called ‘Relics’ – a set of huge pieces-, but the board in a dreadful state was sold off because having large pieces simply as decorations is popular but the light fake metallic single pieces are dreadful crap plus useless as door stops!
My wife Pauline seriously considered divorcing me or at best getting me sent to the nearest loony bin when she saw this monster enter our home, but loveable as she is, permission was eventually granted ……….phew! Getting the wife on your side is essential – happy wife = happy life!
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