Why do Collectors Collect Chess Sets? Archives

My interest in chessmen collecting started way back in 1995 on a small scale basis. Not until till June 2017 when Mike John Ladzinski included me into his FB group page “Staunton Chess Set vintage and new post your set” suddenly my interest grows and the collection increased exponentially.

Collecting for me is quite different from hoarding. Collecting means appreciating artifacts as symbols of human activity, as milestones, or mementos of certain cultural trends. It means cataloging, delving into the origins, documenting if possible provenance and former owners, the uses, etc. It also means preserving old things, as we are only temporary holders of them, and somebody will come after us to observe, preserve, use and question our collector’s items. The more time one can devote to the collection the more one learns — about the things themselves, their background — and ultimately about ourselves as well!

It is a good idea to limit one’s scope — for the simplest of reasons like space, time and money. But also because nobody can collect everything, even in a small field. A collection can be nicely rounded without being encompassing or enormous.

As a collector and lifelong chess player with some ambitions I have concentrated on the tools of the game — pieces mainly, with some boards and clocks along. That would be the mainstream in chess collecting. Other collectors might be more interested in chess variants (like Shogi, Turkish chess, Thai or Burmese chess, Mongolian chess, etc.), in chess stamps, in fine literature on chess, in chess books, chess mementos, and so on.

Over the years I have collected numerous chess books and playing in the overseas tournament as well, meeting new friends and visiting new places. I have tried to capture as many as possible of my collection strains on the web, which has become a useful tool for comparing, buying and selling, and congregating collectors on an international scale. My aim as a collector is to understand and learn — and to provide a bit of support for others who are tramping along the same trail.

There are many parts of the above lines, which resonate deeply with me. Just to give one example, when I began collecting chess sets, I liked the Lardy, it was amazing. Then my collection starts to increase exponentially. Thanks to chessbazaar for the fine reproductions, I ended by buying their many sets but here are some of the favorites. The Hungarian set, Romanian set, Blackburne set, 1849 ver 1, Dubrovnik, Austrian, Richard Whitty, Lasker(chess praxis version) Duchamp and many. Recently, I have collaborated with CB to reproduced the antique B&Co set and the Knubbel set which has been applauded by the collector’s community.

To sum up my experiences, as a collector we must begin with an end in mind. What exactly we are collecting. I focus mainly on the FIDE tournament set.