Collection Trends: Board Games

EXCLUSIVELY FOR RANDOLPH STREET MARKET BY NENA IVON, nenasnotes

Recently I have found myself wanting to play board games…is this a winter thing…no, I think a year round thing! While visiting friends at their county cottage a few weeks ago, I found they love to spend weekend evenings entertaining friends, after a divine home cooked supper, playing board games. Imagine actually sitting with “real” people at a table and moving game pieces, tossing dice, stretching your brain and enjoying a giggle or two or three!! We have gotten so use to playing games on our gaming systems or on our tech devices…think PacMan, Candy Crush, Words With Friends, Jeopardy, the list goes on and on and grows daily…let alone the zillion versions of solitaire (I’ll address card games and collecting decks of cards in another post!) we are losing the camaraderie of being with people. Well, that is true of so much of today’s culture isn’t it!! How modern to enjoy the challenges the many versions of board games give us.

Let’s look at their history and then talk about what you might find at the monthly RANDOLPH STREET MARKET….who knows! Board games have been found in Egyptian tombs and, as shown at the top of this post, painted on the walls of the tombs. They can be traced back 6000 years. Senet, as shown in this fresco and in the painting below, dates to around 3500 BC.

Board Games Randolph Street Market

Backgammon originated in Persia 5000 years ago. Chess, Pachisi from India. And The Royal Game of Ur, the oldest game known with surviving original rules, is over 2000 years old.

The Royal Game of Ur

Hounds and Jackals from 13th Dynasty Egypt.

Snakes and Ladders began as an ancient Indian game still widely played today.

You might even want to start a collection of these amazing little works of art. Here are a few examples that I have found over the years at RSM, photos taken by me.

A version of Snakes and Ladders.

As a child I loved all games most especially Monopoly….we certainly did not want to land in “Jail” but rather acquire the most prestigious real estate….what could be more fun. There are dozens of versions of this one of the all time best selling board games. Conceived and patented as The Landlords Game in 1903 by a feminist, Lizzie Magie (she wasn’t credited with creating Monopoly). Here is the original patented design…