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Which chessmen are these?

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Axmann

I was watching Searching for Bobby Fischer, and I saw the part where his dad brings out their chess set. It has red and white pieces, and a green felt base, and it looks like it came with a wooden board as well.

In the following video, you can see it at 13:43

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YniREZKrQj0&feature=related

Could anyone tell me what type of chess set this is? It doesn't look terribly expensive (hence the cardboard box) and the pieces look high quality.

artfizz

Not the same as these ...

but Britain's maybe ...

artfizz

It looks like one of the well-known toy manufacturers' standard offerings - e.g. Waddington, Spears, Hasbro or Mattel.

Elder_Knight

I recognized those at once.  It's a "Gallant Knight" set. 

My folks gave me one of those long ago when I was maybe eight years old.  Mine was ivory and black with 3.5-inch kings. 

They also sold red and ivory sets like the one in the movie.  They also had smaller sets: the one in the film has -- I think -- 2.75-in. kings.

They were sold by the Arrco Playing Card company, based near Chicago. I've seen their adverts in old issues of Chess Life  / Chess Review.The pieces were made of a plastic called "tenite," which is hard but not brittle.

I gather that they stopped producing them sometime in the 1970s. You can find old sets on e-bay.  I finally sprung for a red-and-ivory, because their particular shade of red is quite nice. The distinctive mark is a cross (or plus sign) on the platform atop the rooks.