Origins of Club/Regulation chess pieces???

I was given this set from a women from sweden In the late 90s to early 2000s. 

Pieces in link is equivalent replica in white and black. 

http://www.ebay.ie/itm/Chess-set-Vintage-Boxed-Plastic-chessman-King-9-5cm-Toy-game-retro-b29-/332332647721?hash=item4d6091c529:g:kb8AAOSw8btZhXcv

http://www.ebay.ca/itm/Vintage-Gallant-Knight-Chessmen-of-Champions-Felted-Chess-Set/232465983422?_trkparms=aid%3D222007%26algo%3DSIM.MBE%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D20140620075055%26meid%3D80fcac785f804282ab4541d793048c0e%26pid%3D100011%26rk%3D2%26rkt%3D12%26sd%3D232426207502&_trksid=p2047675.c100011.m1850

Don't know a lot about the details (obviously) other then what I've learned here and mainly from you Chuck, thanks again for sharing your knowledge and relevant texts.  Suspected from what had already been posted here that some such may be part of the reason we don't know the original designer of the Club pieces.  That's regrettable.  While am not unsympathetic of the circumstances as we understand them, as a chess player and follower of chess set design do wish we knew more about who designed the set and how it came about. 

Personally, while am a fan of both sets, I prefer the Club and every piece in it over the Lardy pieces (with the exception of the queens which are so similar) and consider it's modest - one might even say minimalist lines a design improvement.     

Thanks posting up the pics Nordlandia.  Looks like the pieces have seen some action, nice work.  Digging the dark red.

CALL TO FANS AND OWNERS OF CLUB SETS, PARTICULARLY WOOD SETS, AND ANY PLASTIC SETS FROM 1980'S OR EARLIER, PLEASE POST YOUR SETS HERE AND SHARE WHERE YOU GOT THE SET AND WHAT YOU KNOW OF IT.  MANY THANKS!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staunton_chess_set

Howard Staunton lobbied to have chess sets made uniform because as we all know, it's a huge disadvantage to sit down with someone else's set and be told "actually that elephant is a bishop and the fire-plant looking thing is the rook in this set" - it's very weird to play.  "Is that the knight?"   Hugely advantageous to the person using their own set.   So you make them all basically identical, with height and shape being basically the same throughout all the sets, and you cut way down on this unfairness.

Uniform Stauntonish design seems to of worked out, have not yet encountered a set would refuse to work with.  Still I like the rule that black gets choice of clock side and using her own set. 

I scanned that USCF ad from the October 2000 issue of Chess Life magazine. As far as I know, those pieces from USCF were the first time the "Club Special" design had been offered in wood. I jumped on it because I'd been using plastic "Club Special" style pieces since the late '80s, and I had always wished I could get the same design, except made out of wood. The plastic ones I had in the '80s were dark reddish brown (sort of a maroon color) and caramel color, exactly the same as the ones posted by Nordlandia in post #41 (that picture brought back memories). I had a couple of those sets, which came in a typical board game cardboard box and included a cheap folding board. They were sold at my local Ben Franklin's store for something like $7. Later, in the early 1990s, I found a different version, also in a board game package, at Walmart, except the pieces were black and ivory colored, which I liked a lot better (I never did like the caramel and dark reddish brown colors). I posted a picture of those in that thread you linked to.

I still use the boxwood ones that I bought from that USCF ad in 2000, and they are still my favorite pieces, even though I have a couple of sets now that are far more refined (and expensive), including one with real ebony pieces. Also, those ones I have are nicer than the "Quality Wood Chess Pieces" mentioned by the OP that are currently being sold by wholesalechess.com, because mine are actual boxwood, and those ones are just unspecified "hardwood". The ones that Crappov posted in post #33 that he got from Chess Cafe appear to be actual boxwood like mine.

As mentioned in my previous post, I had a couple of sets in the late '80s that were caramel and reddish-brown, exactly like the ones Nordlandia posted in post #41. I bought them at my local Ben Franklin's store in Dexter, Maine. After some digging around, I could only find a few pieces:

I included some pieces from the black and ivory color set I bought in the early 1990s to show that there are minor differences between each piece in the two sets, so everyone making this style of pieces wasn't using the same molds. I couldn't find a bishop from my '80s caramel and maroon set, so I stole one from Nordlandia's picture for a comparison with the bishop from my black and ivory set:

A thing I like about my black and ivory pieces is that they have a matte finish, whereas most, if not all, of them currently on the market have a glossy finish. But I've rarely bothered with those plastic pieces since I got the boxwood version 17 years ago:

Thanks a bunch for the photo's and history!  Yeah had noticed the difference between yours and Crappov's sets with wholesalechess.com's version.  Seems like The House of Staunton has the best version of the Club pieces currently on offer, unless of course you concider adding used USCF/chesscafe versions to the mix and not sure how readily available those would be or if they were ever offered in anything other then boxwood/ebonized.  

" I still use the boxwood ones that I bought from that USCF ad in 2000, and they are still my favorite pieces, even though I have a couple of sets now that are far more refined (and expensive)..."     

Have always liked these pieces but as have focused working more with board and pieces and less on computer, well defined yet simple designs are definitely showing themselves to be my preference and probably these are the very definition of simple yet well defined.  

Yeah, the House of Staunton "Club Series" - https://www.houseofstaunton.com/club-wooden-chess-pieces-3-75-king.html - are a nice incarnation of these pieces, and they are real boxwood, but they cost $79 for the ebonized version, which is over three times what Crappov and I paid for ours. You can save $10 if you want the "golden rosewood" (sheesham) version, though that's not my preference (I prefer black pieces to be black, and black squares on the chessboard to be walnut).

I don't know how hard it would be to find used USCF or ChessCafe versions. If looking somewhere like eBay the problem might be coming up with the right search terms. Like most chess pieces, they aren't labeled at all, and they came in a plain brown cardboard box which only says, "Made in India" on it (at least mine did), so if there are any on there, who knows what each seller wrote for an auction title and description? Ideally the auction title would be "S471 USCF Tournament Design Wood Set" (or whatever ChessCafe called their version), but how many people who might be selling some old chess pieces are going to remember that? I only remember it because I still have the 17-year-old magazine which has the ad in it.

Good point.  What I like about the USCF/chesscafe version of the Club pieces is that they seem to follow the original design pretty closely.

Here is a nice black and white photograph that could have aptly been titled a call to arms:

Here's a version of the plastic Club Special pieces that I've never seen before (I found the picture while doing a Google image search):

The top of the queen is the biggest difference. They are being sold on a Greek site called "Chesstavli".

Thanks to our friend Bill Noyes, I think we finally have found the origin of the now ubiquitous Club Set. The first plastic "Club Set" was manufactured in 1964 by Adult Leisure Products Corporation. It was openly copied from the then ubiquitous Lardy set. Here are some photos Bill posted in the Staunton Chess Sets forum on Facebook.

Dean of American chess set collectors Duncan Pohl elsewhere has republished an ad in Chess Life for these pieces dating back to 1966. I plan on searching through Chess Life and Chess Review myself for other ads in this time period.

Many thanks to Bill Noyes for this fascinating discovery.

A gorgeous set--I have one--but what does it have to to with the topic?

#54-56

👍likes the simplicity in design, Bishop looks different though,