In Statu Quo chessboard Jaques & Son

I found this wonderful In Statu Quo chess board from Jaques & Son in the Saint Urban, a small village in Luzern, Switzerland. 

It seems that Alekhine had a similar chess set when he was found dead in a hotel room in Estoril, Portugal. There is a picture in chess.base.com with Alekhine sitting dead in front of the board. I can't post the link here, as I am in a restaurant in Saint Urban.

I have several antique travel sets, but this is my first with this mechanism.  

There is another article about Alekhine’s death

https://www.chesshistory.com/winter/extra/alekhine3.html

My friend, you continue to find the most amazing treasures. As usual, I cannot escape a small feeling of envy, as nothing like this will ever be found in a shop where I live. I guess I just have to live vicariously through you.

😅😅😅

Actually I found amazing things also in Brazil. I can imagine however that in some cities / states the chance to find something cool is not great.

The most interesting city in Brazil in this context was Rio de Janeiro. I guess that a lot of interesting people in the past enter the country throughout this city. I found for example an old Mickey Mouse from the company “Steiff”, one of the oldest Mickey Mouse produced. I guess I will not find something like this in Switzerland, at least for this price, as Steiff is a very known brand.

In Brazil I found also two of my best chess sets. Both were probably manufactured in Europa, came to Brazil in the 1930s or 1940s.

One of the crazies things I found in a flea marked is not related to chess. I found several carde the visit from famous people, like US President Grant, Livingstone, Charles Darwin. One of these cards is very special - it is from
Charles Dickens (author of David Copperfield and Oliver Twist) and it is signed by he author!

I still have to confirm this, but if this is true, it is amazing, as Dickens is by many considered as the most important Victorian author.

I should probably mention that I go constantly to antiques market and flea markets. It is my hobby. Most things we see in these markets are irrelevant in our eyes.

The only vintage chess items I have are not so spectacular. I have a couple of sets I inherited from my grandfather. One is a Gallant Knight plastic set in a leatherette box with a galloping knight on the top. The other is a Lardy set, which was imported to the US by Cavalier, also in a leatherette box but in very poor condition. I also have a very small Lardy style set, unweighted, unvarnished, in a small slide-top box. All of these sets are from the late 40's - early 50's. I also have an E.S. Lowe plastic Renaissance set we got in the 60's. You can find these still for sale on eBay for reasonable prices. While not very expensive even when new, they look very impressive and were featured as props in countless movies over the years. I also have a lot of chess items from the 80's and 90's, which don't seem vintage to me as I am an old man, but some kids think of them as antique.

Something that I learned in all these years about chess collection is that the value of a chess item depends from the collector's perspective. The most spectacular chess item I have is a chess clock never mentioned in the literature, and I am not able to find a similar one in the Web.

Although I still occasionally purchase sets , I am starting to sell part of my collection, beginning with chess books. With the time I plan to sell perhaps 80 percent of my collection, and the remaining 20 percent should be very selected items. 20 % is still a reasonable collection, as I really accumulated a lot of things in the last 3 decades.

Very nice find  brasileirosim , There is many a rare gem to be found in the land condense by mountains .

Thanks!