The Burnt Zagreb '59 Series Chess Pieces

Hello all.

Excited to be part of this excellent forum, and have a question.

I'm looking at The Burnt Zagreb '59 Series Chess Pieces. Those pieces are $299 on HOS but I found similar pieces around $100 at chess bazaar. 

HOS pointed out that their pieces are heavier and have more detail. The knights, pawns and queens are slightly different as well.

My question is: is the difference that noticeable and justifies paying almost 3 times more for HOS pieces?

The cost of refinement is exponential not linear.

If extra the detail and weight are important to you, then you pay for it. ( You can wait for a periodic sale from HOS and get 10-20% off.)

If you cannot get over the jump in cost, then the additional detail and weight are not important enough to justify the expense for you; buy the $100 set.

Honestly, at this point I'm still not sure what's important to me. They say that their set is 45 oz and the second set is 35 oz. Doesn't look too significant. There is also a question of overall quality and durability. Can $100 pieces be decent quality? On the other hand, are HOS prices really come with high quality to justify it? Or they charge for the brand?

I just started collecting chess sets, so really need to understand some nuances and the quality/price relationship. I have no problem paying more, but need to have a better understanding if the quality justifies the price.

Thank you again!

I will say that if you buy from HOS, or any other reputable American vendor - if there is an issue with the set...

They will take care of you. 

If this ships direct from India, and there is something wrong with the set. Good luck.

Yes, this is probably true. thank you.

Also looking for a good board for those pieces.  They mention the boards have "The House of Staunton logo is silk-screened on the h1 square.", but not all boards mention this. Anyone who bought from them can confirm that all their boards have this logo? What would be a good matching board for those pieces? Don't like the board that comes with those pieces as part of the combo.

I actually purchased a set recently from ChessNcraftsIndia through etsy, and it was a very nice quality at reasonable price. The big question is the long term durability, and what happens when there are some issues. I read a whole topic about CB here where some people were not very happy with their customer service. 

I have a set I bought from CB that had 4 pieces with badly protruding weights. I took advantage of their replacement guarantee. It has been 2 months and counting. Still sitting around with a useless chess set.

Had a problem with a HOS set. Taken care of within two weeks due to shipping back and forth. Same with chessusa. Quick turn around and I have a set and board I can actually use in a timely fashion. 

I am new too. I have bought sets only since the beginning of 2019. I bought the Collectors in blood rosewood, Players in East Indian rosewood, Fischer-Spassky in ebony, and the Grandmaster 3.25 set in golden rosewood from HoS. Every set I listed no matter the price point or the discount coupon always had issues. Issues being dings, scratches, black marks, white residue and probably a few others that I can't remember. This was always very annoying to me but the HoS customer service department was awesome. I just sent photos and they arranged to send me replacements in a timely manner.

I also bought 3.5" Morphy set from Staunton Castle via the Bay site. The set was almost perfect. There were two issues. The ebony king (I believe) had one small ding on it. It was not a big enough to exchange. The big problem was the boxwood side. Mandeep sent me the distressed version which was not what I ordered and it was not something I liked. There is a long story to the exchange process which I won't get into here. In the end, Mandeep made things right and he sent me replacement boxwood pieces. The replacements were perfect in every way. There wasn't a single issue. 

YMMV. My experience with HoS was fine overall but I can't for the life of me figure out why there are always issues with the sets they send me. The set sent by SC only had one issue with the king. Having said that if CB makes a mistake I would assume they would take care of it for free. The problem is if you make a mistake then you will need to pay for the shipping to return the set which will likely be very expensive. Also because the shipping costs back to CB will likely be very expensive then it may be more difficult for CB to address any issues you might have. 

I never had a problem to pay for quality. My question is when comparing two sets, if they look almost identical for my non professional eye, why to pay $300 for HOS set if I can buy an almost identical set from CB? 

For some reason I cannot post links and images, otherwise it would be easy for the more experienced collectors to give an opinion if the sets are really close enough or there are differences that I'm missing. 

CB and other India sellers are able to do the cheap and fast shipping they do because their Exports are subsidized.

You cannot return a set for a refund as the costs are prohibitive - in the $200 USD range shipping from the US... And they will not send you a PDF of a return label. You have to rely on them sending replacements.

I have 2 CB sets that I really like. And no other vendor makes them. But when I order from CB I accept that I am rolling the dice.

@Wes350 I looked up the price to ship a half set back to SC and my jaw dropped. It wasn't $200 but it was around $140 or so.

@kimK10 I have not bought anything from CB yet, but I can compare the quality of my Fischer-Spassky to the Morphy from SC. Both are boxwood and ebony. I would say it is about the same in terms of the finished product. The boxwood for both sets is very beautiful. It isn't too light in color or dark orange either. The ebony for both sets is very dark under normal light and has nice black and brown stripes under LED lights. I can't tell if either is dyed black. The Morphy set was less than half the price. I do not know about the longevity though. Seeing how SC use to make stuff of HoS, I would assume the longevity should be same.

For me, I love the Fischer-Spassky Commemorative set from HoS. I think that is the best reproduction of that set. It is even better than the other iterations of that set sold by HoS such as the Reykjavik set. There are also others who sell that same set for less money but their versions are not as good of a copy. I can see the differences so I would rather pay more money to get the one I want. If you can't see the difference or the difference is not that important to you then go with the less expensive one.

• @sound67 where is Chessncrafts set? In my original post I referred to HOS and  CB.

The burnt Zagreb does not look as nice as the burnt classic staunton. The burnt dubrovnik looks even worse. 

Probably matter of personal opinion and taste. Chess-site included the burnt Zagreb set from HOS in their best sets of 2020 list.

Which burnt Staunton you are referring to?

@kimK10 I agree with you. It is a matter of personal preference. It doesn't matter who likes or dislikes it as long as you like it.

Yes. I still would like to compare to the burnt classic staunton that you mentioned, just to compare, so I would appreciate it if you can send the link to the set you referred to.