Monday morning eBay water cooler chat...

[firewall_xl5]

If this is taking the group to frivolous depths then just say, I'll cease and desist 😉

I'm wondering why the 10cm weighted set sold for a surprising £130 last night. I looked at it and couldn't figure out whether it was British or French? Those bishops look like the BCC Pops.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/280838296369

Who was tempted, and why...

[bulkcover]

I would not say that 10cm for King is the somewhat extraordinary.

But at least it is vintage nice shape set. And the 3 bidders at a lot were pretty close with their amount. I believe they knew what they buy. Set is certainly worth those GBP 130.-

[firewall_xl5]

Wow, 10,000 feedback! Congrats.

No I wasn't querying whether is worth it so much as why. I'm a beginner at this collecting malarky and curious to see what others see in a set.

More to the point, who this set was made by, or at least what the bidders thought.

[bulkcover]

It is uneasy to say why exactly 130.- ... People were ready to this price. Their experience + interest to such set has built this price.

eBay prices are always a wonder for both, buyers and sellers...

There is a chance to buy cheaply and to sell at top-price. There are objective (realistic) reasons for the price and there are also game reasons (casino effect). When it is auction, but not a fixed price sale any price may happen. But of course there are expectations built on the past experiences.

[corptaxman]

This looked to be pretty close to the design of the BCC Popular sets - not just the bishops, but all the pieces including the rooks with their 5 crennelations. It did not have the BCC stamps, and was most likely a generic set of that design sold by the actual maker after the demise of BCC. I have never seen or heard of any of these unstamped sets that could, through adverts or otherwise, be dated to within the BCC chess set period - if true, it leads me to think that BCC may have designed these pieces and had some sort of right (whether moral or legal) to it during its exisence.

These are nice playable sets, especially in weighted form, as here. £130 is not really a lot to pay for an antique set of £32 pieces - less than £4 a piece. That said, it very much surprises me that recently I was able to buy my 2nd BCC-stamped Popular set, also weighted and of similar size, with a very nice box that and been customised with a leather carry-handle for less than £50. It was in a straightforward auction that went to the end.

And that gives rise to an interesting point in connection with the 'manufactured BIN' discussion. If I had been in the habit of doing so, I could have contacted the seller of that Pop set to offer him, say, £90: if he had accepted, would that have been an affront to other eBayers? Who would have lost out other than I?  Not all such BIN offers will be way below the odds or what the set would otherwise have fetched.

In that hypothetical situation I would still have had a nice set at less than what I (in truth) feel it is worth*; the seller would have got more for it; nobody would have lost out - because they seemingly weren't interested anyway in the actual auction.

* in my business there is a truth that market value is what 'a willing seller would pay a willing buyer'. In that case, the market,through the auction, dictates that it's value was only £46 - nobody was prepared to pay more!

[firewall_xl5]

Ah that explains it, or at the very least it's a good theory - post BCC.

I looked at the bishop and thought BCC pops, but wondered if any other manufacturer used the same 'monster bishop' style. It does have the slight whiff of garlic though, hence my British-or-French query 🙂

Of course, the "who made the pops" has been the unanswered question for some time.

Thanks for your input Keith.

[corptaxman]

At first, I had thought the Pops might be a French import - mainly due to the large collars on the bishops, but nothing else about them seems to fit the fench-look, and they do have a distinct resemblance to certain other English-made sets.

Another posibility is that these unstamped sets are simply stock that BCC hadn't got around to finishing off (stamping) when they ceased activity. However, they seem to crop up in too many instances for that to be a plausible scenario - I can't see BCC holding significant levels of stock.

My money is on them having been made by the same firm as made what I and some other collectors have been terming 'Ayres-type' (or similar) sets.But, nothing has yet been positively tied down to Ayres, so this is a great leap - more of a triple jump, actually!

[candylab1]

The most interesting aspect of this set is that the knight heads (despite the look of the other pieces) are definitely not typical of "Popular" sets. In fact they are quite similar to the knight heads associated with smaller sets currently attributed to FH Ayres.

Research indicates that some (many?) knight heads were made quite separately from the main body of turned components and it is possible therefore that "origin" of sets, involving both maker and country, may be more complicated than currently thought.

Mick

-- Edited by candylab1 at 03/12/2012 5:22 PM PDT

[corptaxman]

Yes, I bid at relatively low levels in the hope I might be able to compare the knights 'for real'.  There seem to be differences in the knights even in the smaller standard 'Ayres' sets.

Athough we know Ayres had a seemingly well-established chess-making business in 1895, that does not of itself necessarily mean they were making Staunton chessmen (although adverts show they were selling a Compendium with a form of Staunton chessmen at least in 1890, and it seems less likely that such a huge manufacturing concern would buy in goods it could make for itself). Adverts also show that the same Compendium, unbadged as Ayres, was being sold through other outlets such as Feltham. The length of time they may have been making such sets may partly explain the differences in style - as yet, I'm not aware of any real way of accurately dating an 'Ayres' set (although it may be feasible with the knights on tthe larger sets, which are very akin to a style of Jaques knight).

[firewall_xl5]

Mick's confirmed one of my suspicions - that knights may have been outsourced to a specialist carver / supplier. As the volumes increased that may well have made commercial sense, eventually leading to whole ranges being outsourced. Clearly that's what BCC did with their Popular range, as did Jaques early/mid 20c.

Which got me thinking about Jaques crown stamps yesterday, and I wondered if there was any link between the evolution from the 'square' crown base (which I've seen referred to as their 'silver' period) to the eventual 'oval' that is found on the later sets where the quality is much diminished. Were Jaques turners and carvers actually producing those oval based crown stamps?.. or was that production outsourced. I don't think there's any doubt that it was, eventually (to the cheap series), but when was(were) the crossover(s) points, and is there a correlation with crown stamps?

Forgive me if this speculation has already been explored, I'll catch up eventually 🙂

[candylab1]

Keith,

There is documentary evidence that FH Ayres were making Staunton chessmen from at least c1870. There is also a later illustrated advert c1900 that depicts Staunton chess pieces. Unfortunately the illustration does little to identify actual sets. Interestingly the pieces illustrated do provide the best link found to date between BCC and Ayres. The same pieces appear in Cunnington's 1899 book, The Modern Chess Primer. This book was published by Routledge under the supervision of BCC in the British Chess Handbooks series. In all other books by Cunnington published in the series that I have seen, the pieces used for illustration are Royal Chessmen. It seems odd that BCC would allow another makers' chess pieces to be used unless there was a tie up.It might also be significant that BCC introduced the Popular sets in 1899.

I note that you have continued thr debate on BIN's in this thread. You show an interesting actual example where it is possible that the seller might have benefited from a negotiated BIN, if it had been offered,at no detriment (or affront) to collectors in general. This ignore the primary point that the negotiated BIN is wrong in principle, but since you have taken us down the road of financial outcomes, let us look at another example. Not too long ago an early Jaques set came up on a 7 day eBay auction. It had at least one registration sticker in view, seemed complete and in reasonable condition and was housed in a later (1860's or so) box. Within a few hours, and with just 24 views the set had sold on a negotiated BIN for £500. Do you think that chess collectors were given a fair chance to see this set and try and buy it? Do you think a fair price was paid for it?

Mick 

-- Edited by candylab1 at 03/13/2012 9:51 AM PDT

[firewall_xl5]

Mick,

I think in that instance, no, the only winner there was the buyer.

Last week I 'won' some Jaques 'spares' for £27. The seller later told me they'd had a 'Spanish gentlemen going crazy' to buy them having offered a BIN of £70 to end the auction. That was declined, and then - such irony - the gentleman couldn't lodge his bid for some reason, and so it wen't to me. He would have topped my bid by the way, but the result was that by doing the 'right thing' the seller lost out, although we the collectors won the day.

John

[corptaxman]

Mick,

I haven't seen anything as early as 1870 re Ayres/Staunton- do you have a copy? The 1890 ad. is my earliest ref.

The Cunnington link does seem to be a good link on both counts, although it could equally appear odd that BCC would 'permit' Ayres-type pieces when they could have shown their own-manufactured sets: perhaps, as you imply, they were seeking to promote the Popular sets.

As to the 'negotiated BIN's' I only raised it here because it seemed to follow on naturally from the Popular set points. I don't accept your argument of '...the primary point that the negotiated BIN is wrong in principle.' - it may be 'wrong' in the context of 'your' principles, but not everyone may feel the same. As I have stressed before, it is NOT something I engage in, and it is undoubtedly annoying, but I do not view it as something so morally reprehensible as to be 'wrong in principle'. Everyone must act according to their own principles: throughout the ages and cultures, the question of 'principles', ' morals', 'ethics' and 'right or wrong' have varied significantly, and I don't feel it right for me to impose my moral views on others: if the many find something so morally wtrong, they should seek to have it proscribed.

I saw the Jaques auction to which your refer (before it was ended). I sincerely doubt the seller got as much for the set as he might, but it was his choice to take the bird-in-the-hand - so, if we are to lay guilt he must be held equally as responsible as the offeror (ignorance, if such applied, is not an excuse: the effect is the same). I don't believe that collectors have a 'right' (although you do not use that word) to see and bid on a set (or anything); there is too much talk today of 'rights' without obligations. Neither do I believe that sellers - in an auction or otherwise - have a right to receive a 'fair' value, the name of the game is that you get what is offered.

In the last stickered-set auction, I told the seller very early on that it was such and a very early set and, when he said he had received BIN offers I said that, if it were mine, I would not accept them, and would let it run to the end when he would probably be pleasantly surprised. Note: I did not tell him not to accept: it was his choice; neither did I say he shouldn't treat with BIN offers as they were unethical.

These are undoubtedly tricky matters, and I think each should be permitted to do as they feel right, within the rules of eBay (as they lay them down). Anyone who doesn't like it should lobby to have the rules changed - or accept the status quo.