What's the oldest chess set you own?

I own a very old chess board. It's at least 120 years old. It has a lovely patina but squares are quite small so even my 3 inch set looks a little crowded on it. Would be interested to see any old chess sets and boards 🙂

Oh here's my chess board. The chess men are modern.

My oldest is this one, dating to the mid 18th century. It is a set made in the "Old English" pattern, which belonged to the Gareth Williams collection and is shown as exhibit 1 in Michael Mark's "British Chess Sets". The set was exhibited at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London on the occasion of the annual meeting of Chess Collectors International from 12-24 May 1986. The board is slightly younger and probably dates to late 18th or early 19th century.

What an incredible chess set. Must be a privilege and a responsibility to own. I know with mine I feel if it's lasted this long I must look after it!

My oldest gaming pieces are these ones here from the Fatimid era. The left is most likely an ivory pawn from an islamic chess set probably dating to the 11th century.

Yes, as a collector with a passion for antique chess sets, I always feel like their custodian.

Incredible.

Great idea for a thread!  Some of our fellow members have incredibly awesome pieces!

A lot of beauty, but I can't imaging trying to play with the red and white one.  "the microphone takes the water fountain at g5"   

Is it easy to date chess pieces and do you date them by the knight?

I have a dream that one day I will pick up a bargain from ebay or a car boot sale but how do you know what you've got?

I know with more intricate pieces it might be obvious but with general Staunton type pieces how do you know?

@QueenClaudia2003 - sometimes it is easy, but often enough it is complicated. There is not a whole lot of reliable data available. Auction catalogues can be a good source, but even with them you need to be careful. It depends on the expert who worked on the descriptions. Some experts are real experts, some are utter failures. I have seen auctions in which all the information on antique chess sets were plainly wrong and entirely made up. In the end it is a lot of experience gained over the years.

In Staunton sets made by Jaques, the knights are usually a good start, together with boxes and original labels etc. Wood patina can be an indicator as well. Despite numerous attempts of modern makers to furnish their modern reproductions with an "antiqued" finish, the results are usually far off from the real thing. It does not take a lot of experience to distinguish a real patina from a fake one. But again, you need to be careful to not mix patina with dirt. The latter can (and should) be wiped off.

And it is helpful to know a bit about styles and how they developed. It helps identifying a true antique set from a modern reproduction. Carving quality is a factor as well. Carving quality in the 19th century, at least in the sets from well known Fleet Street makers, was far superior to the sometimes poor efforts of today's manufacturers.

But no matter how many indications you may find in order to identify the origin and age of a set, usually a lot of uncertainty remains. In this case it is usually a good thing to develop a certain gut feeling or, if you have enough time and do not need to decide immediately about whether to purchase or not, to discuss with other collectors. There is an enormous amount of swarm intelligence out there.

@lighthouse - Beautiful sets, thanks for sharing!

Yes I like those sets too and thanks for the information. I guess it's mostly down to experience by the sounds of it.

I'm trying to get experience (although I know that type of experience takes a long time!) by looking at a lot of different chess sets.

There was one on ebay that said 'lovely old ebony chess set'. There's so many that say that with no indication of how old is 'old'.

Anyway sent him a mail asking how old, size of king, whether it was weighted and were the men ebony or ebonised.

He replied saying he didn't know how old they were as he picked them up from a car boot sale and they were not ebony but painted black.

It's pretty annoying claiming something is ebony and 'old' when you obviously know so little about it.

Thank you  , EfimLG47 ,  QueenClaudia2003 ,

just to add , I am not a collector but do have love affair with chess ! As my passion is design

& it's history in shape / form , A map of kinds that can speak to your soul !

Which brings me & draws one to many other interests , Maybe in another life , it would be chess sets of the rare antique kind .  To my son of 7 years old at the time pointed out to me "there  old bits of woods  from a junk shop " 

I had a metal chess set that was tinted green (with age) with proper figurines. It's sad that we lost it because that came from the 1700s -_-

This is the only set I had when I was a kid. It's library size and it's from around 1983. Unfortunately I miss two pawns.

Edit: I just had a good look at all the pieces, it seems I have lot leaning pieces....

I own a plastic chess set ;')

I'll look that book up thanks.

Not long ago I contacted a US auction house after they offered a Staunton chess set, which they had dated to ca. 1780, and asked them to eventually reconsider, after I made them aware that the Staunton design was only introduced in 1849.