A New Home for *Old Pieces

A few weeks back you may remember forum regular Chuck starting a thread for his 4.4 inch Ebony and Boxwood House of Staunton Murphy set he was selling. Well I was the lucky buyer, and since these great pieces have moved half way around the world I thought I should lash out and shout them a new home. They arrived safely downunder in their original HOS box..

... and as comfortable as they looked in there, I thought a perfect accompaniment for them would be a matching HOS Coffer. I was lucky enough to catch an ebay sale 20mins before it was finishing, of a mahogany deluxe coffer. They seem to rotate what boxes they list on ebay, the last mahogany one listed was about a month prior, so I hit buy! I managed to get it at half what they retail for, so that was a nice bonus. I didn't realise untill it arrived how huge coffers were compared to regular chess boxes with the two compartments. The coffer is laminated in mahogany, comes with a key with tassle and this one also had the HOS logo laser etched on the lid.

They're just the stock photos. In real life this thing looks much bigger

Here it is on our lounge room table. That's a 2.25inch board in the background

Next to Chuck's box..

And finally with a dal rossi chess box for 3.75inch pieces

Last photos (though I took plenty more)

Simply beautiful Matt.

Obviously they have fohnd another good home and Chuck does. Ot need to worry about the future of the pieces he parted with. 

Congratulations Matt-el, your new pieces are gorgeous and that coffer is simply beautiful!

They look great, Matt! And quite happy in their new home! May they give you many good moves and victories.

beautiful set.

Quite a future heirloom that  !

Thanks guys, and thanks again to chuck who is an excellent trader to deal with. He takes good care of his pieces, and better care of his customers! I just finished polishing the pieces up with some renaissance wax

As for the coffer, in way of a review I'd add: plan out where you are going to put this thing, it's a lot larger in real life. You can see the chess box I've got on top of the piano in the background, there is no way this would fit on there!

Additionally I'd add that while eBay is an excellent place to find deals on HOS merchandise, quality is always a factor. The reason I bought the Morphys off a fellow collector was I'd read a lot on here about quality control slipping recently at House of Staunton. My main worry with that is that living in Australia even if a company is prepared to take product back or swap pieces the cost of shipping quickly becomes prohibitive. I took a risk with this chess coffer and on the whole it largely paid off especially for the price. However I should note that the box came with a small chip of laminate missing in the front corner of the box as well as a varnish/stain smear also on the front of the box. It wasn't enough to make me want to send it back, but it would have been nice if they were on the back of the box. I'll touch the chip up with a stain and I'm sure I won't notice it anymore and as for the varnish smear it kind of looks like a wood knot anyway.

The rest of the box is perfect, there are small mahogany knots on the back, which look quite nice and natural. 

Now that the pieces have a nice home, it's time to think about building them somewhere to play ...

Beautiful set Matt. Congrats, and I also wish you many future happy memories playing with it.

Nice set and coffer, Matt.  I have the Morphy from HoS in ebony, only in 4".  Even the 4" set...it's a hunk of wood...a pretty substantial set, large and nicely weighted.  Congrats!!

Thanks guys, I'll start a new thread on the chess board project. The woods in the picture above are Australian Jarrah and Queensland Maple.

That would be nice Matt, I like the dark wood of the first board, its beautiful. Australian Jarrah, its gorgeous, I have never seen it before.