As far back as humans walked the Earth, there were games, many of which were played on a field that had been drawn in with a sharpened stick, or boundaried by rocks, and in the case of Kalah and similar “pocket” games, the landing places were scooped out of the dirt.
Pieces for those early “board” or “flat” games were typically made of wood, stones, shells and in fact anything that was traded as money, including beads. Yes, beads were used as game pieces, and I have a large collection of ancient board game pieces that show how broad the variation could be.
Historians today weren’t THERE, actually THERE, in the Old West, when people had nothing to do but play checkers after the daily chores were done. Who had checker pieces? But everyone carried SOME cash — you had to. Credit cards didn’t exist back then, and hardly did money.
Cowboys would bet penny against penny. Of course, it had to be “even money”, no such thing as nickels against pennies, unless one of the players was a pro gambler with some sort of edge that gave him the long-term win.
So who owns which penny?
The solution is so simple and so obvious that it was thought of thousands and thousands of years ago.
One player’s pieces were laid down on the board face up. The other player’s pieces were laid down TAILS up, making two distinct armies or teams.
Of course, people being what they are — a sort of goulash-combination of monkey, robot & zombie — they tend to cheat, by “stealing” a piece, turning it over as if it’s theirs, when their opponent isn’t looking or is distracted by some clever ruse, such as, “hey, it’s awfully hot in here, would you mind opening a window in the other room?”
Checkers has been around for well over 40,000 years of recorded and unrecorded history. It has been called “droits”, “droughts”, “draughts”, “checkers” and many more names, but it’s always about capturing territory by placing a man there, and capturing opponents by jumping over them or in some game variants, landing directly on them, such as in chess.
Sumerians used shells for money. Inland, they tend to be rare enough to make a good medium of exchange. Shells can be quite different, but coinage tends to be roughly the same, given the same denomination, mint source and period of time.
For thousands of years, and well into this present century, checkers has been played for money, chocolates or hash brownies — you eat or keep what you take off the board. This can lead to some rather awkward and bizarre moments, and you can be sure that they have and do, even now, somewhere and somewhen.
Various forms of Checkers or Droughts have evolved over the centuries, but they all started as a simple game of “tic-tac-toe”. Eventually, pieces were used instead of making an “x” or an “o”, and there are many solid 3-D tic-tac-toe games out there — check out Sharper Image to see what I mean.
People have to do SOMETHING to while away the time, and gambling is one steady stream of entertainment and expectation.
In the “take it, you own it” style of play, you keep what you take, and return pieces when the opponent reaches your back defense line and crows triumphantly some variant of “King Me!!!”.
In Greek and Roman times, crowds would gather to watch the aristos gamble away millions in gold pieces at the gaming tables, and it was always a piece-takes-piece type of gameplay.
High-Stakes Checkers is played tournament style, with the rules and regulations of International Competition in force, so that the playing field is even for all players. Well, at least for the players who have the bullion to put down a bet.
I have been developing a line of historically significant checker sets, and I believe that they have a definite place in the market, albeit a limited and narrow appeal to the very intelligent and well-informed, a small percentage of any population, I’m afraid.
So you can present a “Guaranteed Authentic Civil War Coin Checkers Set”. It IS the same, except that the pennies are now protected from sweat, scraped and other damage by the acrylic casings — so it will last many decades and even generations longer than the raw, bare coins.
It’s not limited to Civil War. I have on hand ready to make and ship the following checker and chess sets — chess sets, by the way, are 32 pieces, and there must be at least six clearly defined denominations in the currency from which I make the coin chess sets. In the case of ancient artifacts and such, I can’t promise a chess set, but I CAN make a checker set out of almost anything small and flat, and that includes a LOT of things.
My big bet will be on the SPECIAL DATE chess or checker set.
You have but to name the date, and I will undertake to assemble your custom chess or checker set, and I’ll include the board, and even have box-boards and chess and gaming tables available if you like and can afford such luxury.
For the rest of us peons, it’s cardboard and in-circulation currency, and that’s not a bad idea at all. I’d be happy to make up a coin chess set in circulating currency, and it’d be dirt-cheap, mostly the cost of the acrylic, the board and the pennies, so figure about $48 for a common in-circulation currency checker set, and $64 for the chess set, which includes half-dollars, quarters, nickels, dimes and pennies.
If you want the larger chess set with the dollar royals, that will set you back $89, because everything, including the board, is more expensive.
I’m also offering a SEMI-RAINBOW checker set at only $69. They are rare even with a light rainbow toning. These are not wild garish rainbows — they have enough rainbow to act shamanically and in quantum vibration states.
There is no FULL rainbow chess or checkers set — forget it — and full rainbows are gonna cost ya around 450 to $200 a coin for the not-so-important ones, and a LOT more for the really rare guys, so let that vague hope go, unless you find them yourself.
If you self-find them and send me 24 matched coins to mount up in checker-set form for you — with your coins, the cost is only $69 plus $1 extra — I charge an extra dollar because you had the fun of searching the coins, so there.
Of course, there’s my labor in making the sets and in finding the coins and so on, so when you get here for a workshop, put a few hours into the garden, okay?
I’d like to see a small business come out of this idea. Let me explain what its deeper significance is, and you’ll understand why this would make such a good cottage industry.
If you’ve seen Vincent Price, Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre and Jack Nicholson in “The Raven”, I hope it was in the restored version, where the sound and color have been brought back to life.
You’ll see a lot of hand-waving and finger wiggling in that film, because they’re all into “hand-manipulation magic”. Now, gestures and vocalizations are merely the hard-copy that indicates the actual act of Will that produces a magical or quantum effect.
Quantum is easy to figure out and even easier to master. I show how it’s done on the video in which my family is winning the $15 million dollar California lottery, and then you can see the press conference where I give it all away.
Why did I give it away?
Because it’s just local currency, of no value on my home-world, and of no personal interest to me even if it did have value in the world next door. I won the lottery merely to show how easy it is, and gave it away for the same reason I deleted my First Place Winner Level 99 Trapper Assassin on the Diablo Ladder, not just once, but three seasons in a row, each one taking about three months of solid work to complete, as some of you know.
ALL PRICES BELOW DO NOT INCLUDE A BOARD — board prices vary according to size and finish.
Time Periods Available:
- NOW — It seems obvious, but maybe it isn’t, so I’m mentioning that I can make a contemporary in-circulation chess or checker set that will stun you with the sheer high-level of coinage you’ll see in those protective acrylic capsules.
- THEN — What I mean is, you have your choice of Lincoln Cents for any date between 1909 and the present time. I can search any date in any currency, I’ve used them all in my time. I have an idea that someone might want a checker set celebrating an Indian Master, possibly with gold fanam as pieces??? It would take the better part of a year to assemble the parts, and there’s no guarantee even then.
- CIVIL WAR — Here, it can be any grade from passable jewelry-grade all the way up to ARE YOU KIDDING???, meaning total wipeout high-grade coinage, if you don’t care about cost.
- REVOLUTIONARY WAR — During the war, the coinage was mostly Dutch, French, Spanish, English and German, but just afterward, there was a Continental Congress, and the U.S. Mint started to produce coinage, which is very valued and typically not at all cheap. Most of it is too thick to put into capsules, but I could manage some Continental coinage if someone wanted it badly enough to send me on the chase.
- WILD WEST — Actually, it’s the time of the Indian Wars, just after the Civil War, and many folks have gone West to make their fortunes.
- GOLD RUSH DAYS — These coins can vary from pennies to Fractional Gold Coins that were made with Gold Rush metal from the hills above Sacramento. The coins tend to run about $375-$450 apiece, so multiply that by 24 for checkers or 32 for chess, and figure the larger coins are going to cost around $2,000-$4500 for the larger ones, and about half of that each for the smaller $10, $5, $2.50 and $1 gold pieces that we’d need to complete your CALIFORNIA GOLD RUSH chess set. If you have to ask how much it will cost, you can’t afford it.
- ANCIENT WORLD CHECKERS OR CHESS SET — You have but to name the culture, and I can ALMOST guarantee that I have some group of artifacts from that site and time right here in stock in my Improvised Magical Weapons Workshop. How much? Anywhere from $48 all the way up.
- EDWARDIAN CHECKERS or CHESS SET — This is the period from the death of Queen Victoria to the death of Edward VIIth in 1910, officially the end of the Edwardian Era, but it often is extended to 1914, the beginning of World War I — it was in all the papers, you couldn’t have missed it.
- VICTORIAN CHECKERS or CHESS SET — Coins dating from 1837 to 1901 would fall within the Victorian Era, the latter half of which was termed La Belle Epoque — The Good Times. They turned out to be the last of their kind.
- LINCOLN MEMORIAL or SHIELD PENNY SETS — Like I said, any date, and any condition you specify — the cost will be very minimal, even for a very fine looking set.
- LINCOLN WHEATIES — Dating from 1909 to 1958, you can specify dates or a specific period or type of Lincoln Wheat coin you want in there.
- CATCH O’ THE DAY — I will make a Checker or Chess Set from this night’s “catch”, meaning that I’ll glean and select 24 whallopingly incredible coins that I self-found that very night, and I’ll ship the finished set out to you that very morning as is, all for the low, low price of $48!
- ROMAN CHECKERS or CHESS SET — Prices vary according to scarcity and condition, but they run anywhere from $275-$375 for the Checkers Sets, and $675-$875 for the Chess Sets.
- GREEK CHECKERS SET — $650-$1250.
- EGYPTIAN CHECKERS SET — $275-$375.
- KNIGHTS TEMPLAR CHECKERS SET — $18,500.
- AESCLEPIUS CHECKERS SET — $18,500.
Okay, I’ll get into more of this at the morning meeting, and I hope you’re seeing the real potential and possibilities here — there’s more to this than meets the eye, which you will only appreciate once you’ve tried playing a few games with active artifacts and relics.
You can buy my SORTED and GRADED but UNSEARCHED coins following a search night. They will all be BRIGHTS with no spots or obvious flaws, ONLY in dates that have a history of errors, so there’s no wasted time on dead-end coins that can’t produce. How much are they? I dunno, maybe they should be auctioned off on eBay???
I also will search for unusuals for you if you like, such as rainbows. You can ask, and then you’ll have to wait until I have some luck, which could take weeks or months, during which you can learn to relax and not have time-issues.
See You At The Top!!!
gorby