The Pieces of the 1962 Varna Olympiad
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cgrau
May 23, 2018
0
#21
May 23, 2018
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#26
liml wrote:
Very nice and I haven’t seen a reproduction of this set, so that’s another plus.
Many thanks, Lawrence. You can find lots of these sets for sale if you search bakelite chess on Etsy and Ebay.
very nice
May 23, 2018
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#28
Chuck,
Congrats for the new arrival in your collection.
(In a short time you may are going to need another room, or to push the walls) 
May 23, 2018
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#30
MySeTH wrote:
Chuck,
Congrats for the new arrival in your collection.
(In a short time you may are going to need another room, or to push the walls)
LOL, Herve, and merci beaucoup. The walls are basement walls, and aren't going anywhere any time soon.
Chuck, that's not the correct version of the Varna Olympiad set 1962. It's a later variant. As you can see from the photos, the kings have crosses, not a diminutive finial, and the rooks and bishops are slightly different (the inspiration from the Buenos Aires 1939 set is more clearly to be seen). I've promised to post photos of the set I have, but I just haven't got round to it. Need to take the time to do so shortly.
rcmacmillan wrote:
Chuck, I've looked at those pieces a thousand times and shaken my head. Are they really bakelite and not just plastic? Do they pass the bakelite test? I can't say that I've ever seen bakelite with casting marks before, except those soviet clocks...
Once I've posted photos mine, one can see that the pawns are moulded from at least four parts. Whether it's proper bakelite, I can't say. My guess is that is plastic of some kind, although the sets are always advertized as bakelite.
May 24, 2018
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#33
I'd love to see an original set. As I wrote in the initial post, this is a Bulgarian reproduction of the Olympiad set. The 1939 Olympiad set has pieces cast in three pieces, as an aside.
May 24, 2018
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#34
Good and interesting point about the Bakelite, RC. I confess I'm repeating how these sets are described without having rubbed 409 on them. Bakelite should not have such seams, but they are heavier and denser than other plastics.
cgrau wrote:
Good and interesting point about the Bakelite, RC. I confess I'm repeating how these sets are described without having rubbed 409 on them. Bakelite should not have such seams, but they are heavier and denser than other plastics.
The set I have is most definitely heavier and denser than normal plastic, too. (Giving off that solid clicking sound you get from weighted pieces.)
Jun 25, 2018
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#36
NIKOLA PADEVSKY
I played two simultaneous play gmes with him in the early 1980s. At the time I'm 2000 Eli player. I Lost the two. The Guy impressed me by his playing strength, even though he was no longer in the prime of his form. Last year came a magnificent book with his biography and hundreds and hundreds of his games: his author Stefan Sergiev (I am not interested here to discuss his role as less positive leader in Bulgarian chess), but that sought through various books to redeem of forgetting several Bulgarian players of enormous chisel in chess.
Biography, hundred of Padevsky games many of them commented, and of course dozens and dozens of photographs many of them unpublished.
I did not rest until I got this magnificent 624-page book.
Well, this Bulgarian set, although not an exact exact replica of the Set of The Varna Olympiad, is clearly very close and has been for decades and decades the National Chess Set of Bulgaria.
Despite being made of plastic, the pieces have housing to be weighed. The Knight is one of the most beautiful pieces of plastic I know, and the proportions of the pieces are correct, giving a great balance to the pieces.
Those pieces perfectly express the deliberate, leaden, heavy clunkiness of socialist realism. They look as though a disappointed player could bludgeon his opponent to death with one of them. I assume they were made of iron?