I'm not really into plastic sets, but I bought a Drueke Player's Choice set from USCF back in the sixties, and gave it to a friend in the early seventies. Beset with nostalgia after seeing others' postings of their sets, I got  one I found on Ebay. I'll post more pictures later, but here it is, with 3.75" kings on my 2.25" Drueke board.

The set arrived in fair-good condition. The wear was not unexpected for a set this old and that had been used for regular care, but a number of things weren't shown in the seller's pictures or disclosed in his description. Many of the pieces had glue marks that came off without much work. Most disappointing was the arrival of one pawn who had been guillotined. It clearly had broken off before and glued back together, but the glue gave out in transit, as the seller's picture depicted no broken pawns. With a little work the old glue was removed and the joint prepared for regluing. 

Thanks for posting your vintage Drueke set Chuck. Unfortunately, most Ebay sellers  fail to describe sets correctly. A caveat for all Ebay buyers.

I think I am going to sell my Druke sets red & white and natural & black and buy this Legend chess set which looks more durable and just better looking.

cgrau: Wow! You take a beautiful photograph too.

My heart hurt when I saw the decapitated pawn. Thanks for the happy ending.

Which Drueke board -- Classic Drueke or New Drueke?

My friends and I played serious blitz with Druekes back in the day. I saw the felt rip and the weights come loose, but I never saw a broken piece.

If there was a fault of the heavily weighted Druke set was the weights come a bit loose. I haven't even played with my sets and there are a couple loose weights. 

 I have the Alegria and like it a lot.  

It feels really heavy.  In fact, it might just be a little too heavy, at least for blitz play.  But the quality is high and the set looks great on the board.  Here's a few pics of my set.  I apologize for the low quality pics ...

That sure looks a lot like my grandfather's set, though his was ivory, and the lower mane on the knight didn't have quite so much of a flip to it.

Here's a photo of my first plastic Drueke set.  I bought this set and board for $15.00, back in 1974 or 1975.  (I still have the box the pieces came in, and the $15.00 price tag is still on the lid!)

I played a LOT of games on this set, although now I don't use it at all.

I remember the store I bought it from... a small store in East Tawas, Michigan on Newman Street.  I was 12 or 13 years old at the time. 

Our family moved from Michigan to California in 1976, hence that's how I know I bought it in '74 or '75.

Before I bought the above set (with my own paper route money) I was using this smaller, inexpensive plastic set.

This was a birthday present, back in 1972.  Below is a photo of me as a kid, opening the gift on my birthday.

How do I remember it was 1972?  Actually, I don't.  But do you see that Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine in the bottom of the photo?  I still have that issue!  It's from December of 1972.  And Bobby Fischer had just won the World Championship a couple of months earlier.  I was into chess for the first time that summer.

Also notice my birthday cake in front of my G'ma is a chess board!

MrEd: Is that a Newell Banks folding linen board?

I do miss my old one -- lost to theft.

Yes, it is a folding linen board... but I'm unfamiliar with the term/name "Newell Banks."  I didn't know it had a name.   I bought it at the same time as I bought the hard plastic Drueke set.  At the store I bought it from, they came together, as a set, I'm sure.

Found this ad on the web.  So yes, I guess it is.  This sounds like my board:

Yes. The Drueke and the Newell Banks board were advertised chock-a-block in the old USCF catalog. That's how I got mine.

Along with a Solara clock which also isn't around anymore.

One of my equipment gripes is that decent tournament-quality folding boards have gone the way of the dodo apparently.

Am I the only person who ever has the need to move a chess set to another room with the position intact?

Hey, how much is this plastic set worth?  I'm seeing ads for sets like this on ebay that are listed with a starting price of more than $100.00.  Really?  I had no idea.

MrEd: Oh yeah!

When I saw that, I decided my Drueke was too valuable to play with and I looked for decent current sets at reasonable prices.

Unfortunately most inexpensive plastic sets these days are the pits IMO, so I switched to a standard wooden German Knight set.

The story, which I pieced together later, is that Drueke got sold to some games company called Carom but the Drueke people actually broke the molds of the Drueke set -- presumably to turn their remaining inventory into collector's items.

Judging by eBay prices, that strategy worked.

ipcress, thanks for your contribution to this thread and for all of the information.