Which Vintage Soviet Russian Set do you Like the Most?

where can I purchase one of those vintage soviet sets ?  I would like to have one .... 

I wouldn't say no to any of them but #1 is fantastic.

Hi Reb:

These sets are from my collection and are not for sale.  Just keep checking Ebay  as they show up often.

Aren't you going to say which set you like most, goodknightmike?  

OK, My favorite is #1 followed by # 2.  BTW, both sets from the 1950s. Former World Champion Mikhail Tal was said to have liked sets similar to  the #1 set.

I like #4 the best hands down. I like the jovial appearance and delicate design. Followed by #2 (#2 more than #1 because it seems more sturdy and playable, although I do think #1 is probably more coveted/valuable among collectors).

I've posted this before, but:

When I was in high school in the early '90s I had a weekend job at a laundromat. There was a Russian exchange student who came in there from time to time, who was a little younger than me. When I found out he was Russian, the first thing I thought of was chess, so I asked him if he played. Of course he did, and to listen to him talk, you'd think he was on his way to becoming the next world champion. So I asked him to go get a chess set and we'd play. He said he didn't have one, and asked why I couldn't bring one in. I said that I didn't have one either, and besides, I want to see a Russian chess set. After some arguing back and forth, he said he'd ask his parents to send him one from Russia.

What you see above is what they sent him. Maybe they thought it was fitting considering the circumstances, but that is one miserable chess set to play on. For starters, it is very crowded, and those flags painted over half the squares don't help matters any. The pieces are made from ultra cheap softwood of some sort, and are very light and tippy, and crudely carved/turned. They are drenched in some kind of thick, clear, plasticky finish that was never sanded or anything, and the hand painting of the flag designs doesn't look particularly professional. I assume it was aimed at American tourists in Russia.

In any event, despite the annoyance of playing chess on that set, we still had a lot of good games. When he went back to Russia about a year later, he let me keep it. I haven't played on it since, but it is an interesting memento nonetheless.

Very nice and a great story. 

He was quite a character. His hero was Garry Kasparov, and we often argued over who was better, Kasparov or Bobby Fischer. He said that he knew Kasparov personally. I was highly skeptical of course, and asked him to elaborate. He said his father was a general contractor who had been hired to build Kasparov's house. Plausible I guess, but I still had (and have) my doubts.

There was another chess set he gave me just before he went back to Russia, similar to the one in the picture, but without flags painted on it. It was supposed to prove that he knew Kasparov, because it was supposedly signed by him. I've since compared the writing on it to images of Kasparov's signature I've found online, and I don't see any similarity at all. I don't know what the writing actually says either. Can anyone here read Russian?

That's a much more playable set than the other one; no flags obscuring the squares and the pieces are less crowded, though they are still light as a feather and easily tipped over. Note that the knights are plastic with a wooden base, while they are all wooden in the other set.

He found me on Facebook a couple years ago. I hadn't seen or heard from him since he'd gone back to Russia some 20 years ago. If he hadn't found me, I'd have never found him, because I didn't even know his name. I only knew him as "Dennis", which wasn't even his actual first name, but rather an Americanized version of it I guess, or maybe just an arbitrarily chosen American style name, and even though he told me his last name several times, there was no way I could remember it; I couldn't even really pronounce it. His first name, as written on his Facebook page, is Денис.

He called me on the phone after finding me on Facebook; his English was rusty compared to ~20 years ago; he said he hadn't spoken English in a long time. He said that he was actually only 14 back then (I was 17). I said, "Why did you say you were 16?" He said, "Would you have let me hang around if you'd known I was only 14?"

That scrawl makes it difficult to make out the first word .

It looks to me like it says:

"Success in play!" or "Success in the game!"

"Kasparov"

Thanks! Here is a closeup that might help make it easier to read:

Someone signed it, but it was not Garry Kasparov.

Yes, I know. Like I said:

"I've since compared the writing on it to images of Kasparov's signature I've found online, and I don't see any similarity at all."

So I've known it wasn't actually signed by Kasparov since I first got online in 2001 and was able to see what his signature looks like, and prior to that I was always highly skeptical anyway. I've always wondered what it actually said though.

My translation is fine.

The problem with reading handwritten cyrillic script, besides unclear handwriting, which exists in all languages, is that many script cyrillic letters look very similar.

#3 for me.

I'm going to go with set of one

3, I think 1's knight is ugly

The number 3, without hésitation.