I played chess as a kid.  I never took it seriously and could probably play slightly better then your average person who didn’t take it seriously.  I always kept a cheap chess board around in case I randomly ran into someone who actually wanted to play, which didn’t happen often.  A nice chess set was always on my long-term wish list, but had a lower priority than several other things on the list.  For the last couple weeks, as I do, my aimless attention has fallen on chess.  I think this is more of a small/side interest and not a full-on obsession, but it was enough to prioritize the chess set on the wish list.  After looking around NYC, all the chess shops are in my neighborhood.  Washington Square park is apparently the archetypal chess-in-the-park place.  So after a couple weeks of reading and playing online, I decided to finally get a nice chess set.  Because of the quality of internet chess nowadays, this is probably more for aesthetics, but I still wanted one.  I browsed the chess shops for a few days and finally decided on one.

While browsing, I noticed that all of these sets had heavy, weighted pieces, which was much different than anything I had growing up.  I immediately associated that with the feeling I had when picking up my first nice, heavy watch.  I also think I had some long-ago experience as a kid with pieces like this.  Maybe I went to someone’s house who had a nice set or something.   Anyway, the pieces are photogenic and here are a couple of shots.   I’m still trying to figure out how to capture this, but in the photo of  black pieces, you can just barely see the wood grain, which let’s you know it’s not painted, which is awesome!