Need help with an old game

[Manga Shoggoth]

(Not sure if this is Gaming (Other) or Friendly Banter...)

I went past our local museum today, and they have just been donated an old game called "Tray of Counters" made by Chad Valley. There were no rules or board included (there may not even be a board), and they would like to know what the game was about and how it was played.

A Google search came up nothing about the game itself, but with the following images from Oxfam (where another copy of the game is for sale):

Box Image (http://media.oxfam.org.uk/images/products/HighStDonated/Zoom/hd_100924243_01.jpg?v=1)

Image of Counters (http://media.oxfam.org.uk/images/products/HighStDonated/Zoom/hd_100924243_02.jpg?v=1)

The eponymous tray of counters fits inside the box, but there is a little extra space which might denote either a playing board or the missing rules (or both).

Does anyone know anything about this game?

[Brother Oni]

My googling hasn't been any more fruitful, but could it literally be a bunch of counters for use in other games?

Looking at the box indicates a 'By Royal Appointment' logo, indicating it is indeed the same Chad Valley company that's currently still trading as part of the Home Retail Group (previously of Argos, but now with Sainsbury's). Has the museum tried contacting them directly? They might have a historian or archivist that looks after their historical products.

[Manga Shoggoth]

My googling hasn't been any more fruitful, but could it literally be a bunch of counters for use in other games?

Looking at the box indicates a 'By Royal Appointment' logo, indicating it is indeed the same Chad Valley company that's currently still trading as part of the Home Retail Group (previously of Argos, but now with Sainsbury's). Has the museum tried contacting them directly? They might have a historian or archivist that looks after their historical products.

That's an interesting possibility and suggestion - I'll pass them along to the museum...

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Yeah, that's what I suspect as well. There were probably one or more games in that time and place of publishing which used a bunch of counters, and aside from those only cards, dice or similar materials people are likely to already posses. Maybe some casino style game similar (in this aspect) to poker.

[Algeh]

The next line of research might be to try to date the set more specifically, and then see what kinds of card (or dice) games were popular then to see what kinds of games it might have been providing counters for. You might also see if there were rulebooks with rules to many common card and dice games that are from a similar era.

A light poking around on Wikipedia mostly reminded me how much I don't enjoy card games with complicated rules and didn't yield any obvious candidates (mostly, I got lost in entirely more information about Whist than I could absorb, with the conclusion being that they didn't really look like Whist counters to me, but that I also have never played Whist so may be a bad judge of what would make sense as Whist counters). If I knew a decade, I could probably make better guesses at games to poke at.

[GloatingSwine]

Based on a cursory google, the date is most likely to be between 1938, when the company adopted the "by appointment to HM The Queen" and 1952 when it was changed to "by appointment to HRH The Queen Mother".

During the war the company's factories were mostly used for the war effort.


Chances are this is what it says on the box, a box of counters for use with other games.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

It's hard to see in a picture, but these don't look like bakelite to me. Bakelite was the plastic of choice at the beginning of the century, it was used among many other things as a replacement of ivory in billiard balls and it's really hard and inflexible. If these tokens bend a bit, like you're used to in plastics, they're probably polyethylene, the plastic most toys are still made of today. The material itself didn't get mass produced until 1939 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyethylene), so my guess is this is not a prewar product, which is nicely supported by the earliest year Swine found of 1938. (Also, yes, I'm googling as I write this.) During the war some game companies experimented with plastic, Monopoly (http://allaboutfunandgames.com/the-history-of-monopoly-game-tokens) was sold with wooden or bakelite tokens where before they had always used metal. Given the half polished look, some time went into this, but especially the heart shapes still look a bit off, I'd say just postwar, 1945-Swine's end year of 1952, fits the look well.

I think the long counters at the top right of the picture might be useful for figuring out what these were used for. Is there anything on them that could point to a specific set of games?

[Togath]

Circles, hearts, and arrows are the shapes, going by google image searches for the phrase "chad valley tray of counters".

[Lvl 2 Expert]

O right, we can image search.

Maybe I was wrong on the material, that looks (http://www.oxfam.org.uk/shop/toys-and-games/games/vintage-chad-valley-tray-and-counters-hd_100924243) like it might be bakelite after all. Just with the colors done well.

It looks like originally there would have been 16 counters or every shape and color. This suggests it might have been designed for a 2 player game or up to 4 players. The long shapes (do they look like surfboards to anyone else?) come in 4 colors, which either supports the four player theory, or is supposed to match the suits of cards. In that last case this might have been mainly or partially for games with a Seminole wars deck (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-color_deck) (blue spades, green clubs, red hearts and yellow diamonds) or similar. Unfortunately the Seminole wars are an actual war and not the name of a game best played with brightly colored suits, so that doesn't help that much. It also seems to be completely the wrong time and place for there to be a connection. Another option is German cards (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_playing_cards), but that's a stretch even design wise.

If the tokens are supposed to be values they could be 1, 2 and 5 (roman numeral V -> heart shape?), with a tenfold difference between the colors. Or maybe they were playing an early version of risk and the heart is worth ten soldiers. :smallamused:

[Algeh]

This site: http://rodgersantiques.co.uk/?p=1381 has a history of the toy company in question that's pretty detailed, and it seems that it's an active blog site about antique toys and the blogger takes questions. The OP might want to comment over there to see if he has any insight.

[Manga Shoggoth]

Thanks Guys (especially Algeh, I think you have come up trumps here - that site will probably help them with a few more items as well...)!

I'll pass the details along to the museum.