For those with very thick wallets only.
Antique books and Documents
Sort:
this: http://chesscollectorshop.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=13&products_id=2877 would look pretty good on a nice frame above an antique set if you ask me.
Not an "antique" quite yet but my book from the 1936 event in Nottingham with all the Major players is fairly rare 
Very nice Ronbo, i bought a few books about same age as yours on this site. But these things are growing on me, now that i am looking at original documents and photographs.
There is a book about Paul Morphy that his secretary wrote at the library in Portland, ME. It is mostly about the participants in the New York chess congress he won and i think it details his trip to Europe as well. It is a really old book. Little brown hardcover with some cool pictures in it.
I had an experience due to a chess book which changed my life in several ways.
As a chess set restorer, I was interested in the puzzle of the origin of the Staunton pattern chess set design. I had seen many thousands of different set designs from the German Selenus through the Regence continental sets and on through the coffee house sets, into and through India and China and so on. None of these sets really resembled the Staunton pattern in total. Yes, there were similarities, rooks looked like castles since about 1300 (see the set in the Musee de Cluny in Paris, I have been to see it many times).
So not to get to rabbit chasing, I had read that book symbols followed the Staunton pattern or to say, came after 1849.
Imagine my surprise when I was reading a ratty old chess primer from 1832 and saw the same symbols as we use today. The rest is history, as they say.
http://www.chessspy.com/articles/Staunton%20Chess%20Set%20Design.pdf
Jun 15, 2017
0
#8
Nice story chessspy1. I am also an avid chess collector, not with thousands but some hundreds chess sets, boards, clocks, and some interesting books. I found some years ago the Libro de Acedrex by Alfonso el Sabio, not the original of course but a reprint from 1941. It seems rare,maps I didn't find another copy to sell. I have also a book by Morphy, German edition from 1864, and an interesting book in German, Beitraege zum Schachspiel by Hoffmann from 1833.
I just got 2 books ( Isaak Linder, The Art of chess pieces and Isaak Linder, Chess in old Russia ) from http://chesscollectorshop.com/ i actually bought them from abebooks. In those books there was a visit card from the chesscollector and after going on that website ... When my wife saw me looking trough that site she said with some sarcasm: Oh my god that is totally what we need now! ... i was already a lunatic when it comes to collecting chess boards and pieces like a lot of people on this forum btw so it's ok i don't feel stupid
What you guys think about these does any one have some original old chess manuscripts/books?