Post your Travel Chess Sets

I recently purchased two magnetic Soviet sets. For my stepson whose favorite chess player is Mikhail Tal, I bought this c. 1977 Latvian Mushroom set, produced in Riga (where Tal was from):

For myself, I bought a ’70s Ukrainian “Penguin” chess set (I call it that because the knights remind me of penguins, with the manes looking like the black bad side of a penguin), produced in Dnepropetrovsk.

I bought this penguin set in part because I liked the segmented design; I figured it would be fun to paint the middle rings of the white bases black, as well as the back side of the knights to make them look like proper penguins—and then do the reverse on the black pieces. So it’s more of an art project than the set is intended for travel per se.

Your photo shoots are always so well staged!! Your collection is growing fast.

I would show mine.. but I can’t find it haha. 🙃

Here’s a photo of a traveling pawn instead. 🙂

Thank you! I’m not sure it’s growing fast per se, but certainly a collection of carbolite chess sets can grow faster than a wooden one.

Here is my old pegged wooden travel set. 12 x 12 inches with a slipcase to fit the board. I think it's English but would like to know more. Thanks David.

My own latest build for a travel set.
The pieces are magnetic and have storage inside the boards.
The boards are magnetic to each other ( so they stick together when playing )

That's a very well designed set @jsonvr, and the speckled filament has yielded an attractive stone effect. Also, I think your design with opposing magnets centered within each square is a very significant improvement over a typical magnetic board.

I agree, the textured filament is a nice touch. Although its your board, if you offered the design to others I'd use lowercase letters for the files.

Ow never played on an other magnetic board before, they don't center it? 
That's a shame, it's ecstatically satisfying during play this way  
But thanks for the compliment!

You mean for the rows/columns? I think I choose capital letters because most board I saw online had capital letters.
I don't sell the files, but I do have just finished a site to sell the boards on.
I have to other design boards on there as well:
Same system as the board above, but this is more designed for people who want to get a feeling for notations.

And for this one I f***ed up: switched black and white tiles, in the cad drawing it's already switched but I still have to reprint it:

Correct. The proper notation is 1.e4, not 1.E4. Some boards may use uppercase, probably for legibility. Some people probably don't care or the manufacturer doesn't know. I see alot of marketing photos with dark square in the bottom right too so I assume manufacturer doesn't know (not a CAD error like yours ) I think the boards are very fun and the storage is a great idea.

Ok good to know, I'll keep it in mind for future projects

@Davidkmp - that's very nice. Unusual too I think, I don't recall seeing one like it.

This thread is too good to die!

Here´s my latest small/portable/travel set. It´s non magnetic (and I don´t like the feel of playing with magnetic pieces) wooden polish design. Small enough for convenience but still large enough for actual play. I like the king and queen designs and love the green colour.

I wish I had been awakened to my inner Kodachrome sensibility at the time *many* years (decades?) ago when I acquired this… Love that deep emerald green. And much prefer your clear ‘non-burnt’ pieces -

With 3 Polish sets from that time, the window has closed!

But one window closes and another opens!

My little wooden magnetic set.

Game notation uses lowercase letters, but board notation tends to use capital letters, as can also be seen in the images of the two Polish boards shared between our posts. The electronic boards made by Millenium also use uppercase letters on each square. So there is nothing particularly troubling about using uppercase letters on a board.

Here is a nice set with lower case letters.

Pimped up with weights and paint, this Polish Weigel Ambassador is one of the nicest economy folding boards I own.
They did a lot with the decorations but the burning is next to invisible on the dark pieces so I painted them Australian Aboriginal style, with a billion dots.
I weighted them as they were lacking. I weighted the Bishops more to heighten their profile in the lineup.

I know there are such sets too. It's just that I came across more sets that use uppercase letters - just look on this page: it includes 4 sets (I'm not counting the 2 homemade ones) with uppercase letters and they weren't even posted for this reason. That's why I said that "board notation tends to use capital letters". I personally own at least 4 sets with uppercase letters, probably more.