The Search Party

Whoever is looking for vintage chess pieces is encountering a few incomplete sets. Sometimes they are so rare and fine we pick them up in spite of their holistic and practical shortcomings. Although possible, it's pretty unlikely to come about the same incomplete set twice. This thread is a forum to present such sets, sets that meant enough to us to get them even with one or many of their pieces missing. Pretty improbable still that this thread will join a lot of scattered pieces of the same kind to form full sets here and there, but even if it doesn't let us celebrate this our search party!  

I'll kick things off with this Spanish set in Indajesa style, probably from the 60ies:

Two white pawns, one black pawn and one white knight are missing, (a bishop just missing its top). Pawns 5cm, Knight 6cm, Bishop 7cm (King is 8cm). 

A closer look on the type of horse of this Indajesa because they vary. My hope is that the set may be club size and there may once have been a lot of them. 

And here, a small Staunton set from England with a substitute (albeit a nice substitute) knight on the black side. I would be glad to learn a name of the set or style, if anybody can help me out. 

Knight 4cm, bishop 5cm (king is 6,8).

And here, I presume, a Biedermeier search party, looking for their bigger half. Maybe somebody knows it. Complete set of rooks, yeah! Complete black bishop. A penny to whoever can bring on the look of the knights  

I avoid incomplete sets for the reason you mentioned. It would be nearly impossible to find a replacement piece by itself or even from another incomplete set. I have been tempted though.

Here are a few incomplete sets that I couldn't say 'no' to:

1.  A vintage Soviet style magnetic set that was missing a black pawn.  I'm guessing it's from the 70s.  I found it at a thrift store for $4 and thought it was so cool.  It's my go-to travel set these days.

I bought a replacement magnetic black pawn online, but he showed up taller and fatter than expected.

2. An unweighted plastic set made by Western Publishing in 1963 that I found at another thrift store for $3.  The pieces were in their original (but heavily damaged) boxes, with three of the black pawns missing. 

For now, Black calls in reserves from another set.  Eventually I'm hoping to either 3D print or resin cast proper replacements.

A fellow collector, who sadly passed away a year ago, inspired me to start a Facebook group dedicated to making use of swarm knowledge among collectors in the search for missing pieces. It is called "Missing Pieces - Incomplete Sets" for those of you who are using Facebook.

I have bought a board and it said along with it comes a set of black pieces as a giveaway. In the end they turned out to be 18 pieces, 13 lighter an 5 darker. I am posting this here to find the owner of the remaining 3 plus 11 pieces, so that we can meet and play a game with our set.

From the seller I found out that board and pieces are from Nicaragua. I tried out how they match half my Indajesa set from post #1.. finally they get to play

That's a cute little set