Ebony or Ebonized?

That much light wood under the surface of the pawn is still suspect, because if it were running through the pawn top to bottom you would have found a light spot under the felt, and not had to dig in for it.  Same goes for the top.  I've personally never seen a ebony chess piece where it is only black on the outside, but light wood in the interior.  Definitely sus.

So the inner wood is light but the outer side is black and they say it's ebony. It's kinda convenient to say they dye it black, but who's to say it's not just ebonized boxwood? Look at it in another way, it's pretty skillful to carve a piece with all those curves and have the black part of ebony exactly cover the white part. Oh wait, they say they dye it, so I guess we'll never know eh? 

Well it's not the first time HoS is deceiving their customers. See post #67 https://www.chess.com/forum/view/chess-equipment/review-house-of-staunton-1960-fischer-dubrovnik-chessmen

 

I know you keep saying that we're getting cheap ebony these days but do you mean other retailers like Official Staunton, Chessbazaar, TheChessEmpire, Staunton Castle they're also giving us cheap ebony or is it just House of Staunton? This is quite a statement you make.

 

Pawnerai had an excellent idea. It seems there is a spare pawn to be dissected. Perhaps cut it vertically and horizontally-quartering the little piece to get a great view of the grain. If you don’t have the tools - take it to your local friendly hardware store … bring them in on the story, they will find a way to cut it for you. As Sherlock Holmes might say … the game is afoot!

For what it’s worth, I think it’s plausible (and indeed I hope for integrity’s sake) that what you are seeing is wood grain and/or different shades of grain. Further, I read somewhere (or did I dream it?) that, at some point, manufacturers started staining ebony to meet people’s perception or want that it is consistently black?! Funny, we each have our own perceptions of beauty but I wish they didn’t stain it and just let the variation show - much like it does on various Kamagong pieces that I own.

Anyway, I am no expert …. And so, let the careful dissection begin and the learnings continue.

Yeah that's you making a statement again, HoS with their reputation of having the best suppliers from all over the world not being able to get high quality ebony so other retailers must be even selling worse quality. I wonder what kind of ebony HoS is using for their top tier sets that cost in the thousands of dollars. Someone must be feeling over joyed paying that much for a set that's worth only 40 bucks in reality.

 

I wonder if that’s the case for the Camaratta Collection. Despite being very elaborate and luxurious those sets cost only half of similar sets. Check the Collector sets as an example. 

According to them the Cooke set is something very special and limited they wanted to sell at an incredibly low price as a sign of gratitude for having a very successful year. Wether that is true or not I really don’t know but the set itself is really amazing. It also comes with a free box. Here are the weights for mine:

                     White         Black

    Pawns      36.86         32.88

                      37.00         36.76

                      36.51         36.33

                      37.00         36.45

                      37.91          35.84

                      37.67          35.77

                      38.00         37.13

                      36.64         35.45

Rooks            80.67         78.40

                       82.31         77.05

Knights          73.73         71.75

                       74.72         74.22

Bishops         63.58        62.26

                       62.45        62.25

 Queens         97.23         97.25

                        98.11         97.82

      King         100.00       111.77

Frank Camaratta also sells this very same set from his Chess Antiques website so I asked him about the white pieces being heavier than the black ones and he told me it is because they underweight the black pieces a little bit to compensate for the natural weight difference between the two types of wood. Here is the link: https://chessantiques.com/product/nathaniel-cooke-1849-staunton-chessmen/

 

If you go by the price they must be using the best wood they can possibly get for this set and yet the median weight is even lower at 60.1 Ounces: https://www.houseofstaunton.com/the-golden-collector-series-luxury-chess-set-44-king.html

I don’t think antiqued boxwood is that expensive to make. That would probably add another 30 dollars to the total price but I have never seen that particular tone of antiqued boxwood anywhere else.

@ManoloESBU My point is your statement that HoS that has the reputation of having the best suppliers in the world doesn't hold water. For their high end set they can source high quality ebony but for their 400 bucks sets which by no means are cheap, they can't so they use cheap ebony? So it's either high quality ebony or the worst quality ebony that they can source? I don't believe that.

I also do not believe that as well. I bought the Anderssen set from Frank’s CA site once. I returned it because the antiquing was too dark for my liking. Here is the set.

Anyhow the set was $299. It was advertised as genuine Gaboon ebony (see below description... 6 lines down). I can tell you the ebony was beautiful. It was extra dark but the brown stripes are still visible under LED light. The stripes were really dark as well. It was very different than the ebony that is sold now where the brown stripes are a little medium brown. I wished I took a photo of it.

I don’t think they use a different ebony for their lower value sets as opposed to their high priced sets. If they did why would they use Gaboon ebony in a $300 set? 

Whoaa gabon ebony set for 300$, with the some knowledge I have now I'll take two please But now you're mentioning it, I do remember some here who have bought their sets some time ago, (like 10 years ago or so?) their sets were made of really exotic woods like gaboon and some others that I can't come up right now. 

Michael, Yeah those old HoS sets were made during a time when Gaboon wasn’t that expensive I suppose. I think HoS had a lot of stock of some of those sets with the older design. The Andersen was probably one of those. If I remember correctly, their 3.5” Cooke sets were made in Gaboon as well. I believe those were all sold out already.

I am purchasing sets because I enjoy playing, studying and displaying them… not as an investment per se… on the wood, I have some ebony sets but I have three Phillipines sets in Kamagong; one folding, one club size (from Holger) and one giant set with 7+” kings! Similar to what DKW noted - I feel these will only increase in value because they are harder to come by and the use of the wood is now restricted (I believe). Anyway, albeit it is the least functional - the 50-60 year old giant set, in an equally massive folding board - is the hardest to come by and therefore may be of some value, one day. 🤔

@DesperateKingWalk That sounds about right. It could be why you were able to buy nice ebony for $99.00 about 20 years ago. I think some of the HoS’ sets such as the Anderssen and Cooke were made from the good stuff but due to the lack of popularity these sets could have just sat in their warehouse for ages waiting to be purchased.

True, with the Queen's Gambit the demand skyrocketed so is the price and it keeps continuing now with the scarce of resources (woods supply).