Featured Old (?) wooden box with wood-&-metal implements

Hello all -- funny and ironic that the sports-&-games-&-sports-memorabilia guys are asking for help about a tabletop sports game, but here we are. We were recently presented with images of a previously unknown game, and we'd like at least to put an approximate date to it, which we think has some remote possibility of being estimated based on details of the box construction and hardware. This might be better suited for the Furniture or Tools sections, but we didn't want to double-post...

The game is contained in a wooden box containing playing pieces with illustrations of 19th-Century ballplayers (means zero as far as dating -- illos could have been done any time at all in the last 130 or 140 years). The other game implements include a couple of wooden, metal-tipped, miniature batons, and a crude wooden metal-tipped calipers or compass. Our suspicions are that the whole thing is a homemade concoction and not a commercial product, that it could've been made in literally any year since the 1880s, and (completely immaterial here -- all we're looking for are insights into game's age as suggested by the construction and hardware) we have a fair guess as to the method of play.

Posted below (hopefully) are a photo of the entire game, and cropped images to show details of the box hardware and implements. Any help will be greatly appreciated.

 

What kind of material are the round playing pieces made of? And what's the diameter?
EDIT and PS: Are the playing pieces covered with black felt on the sides and the bottoms, like they are made to slide on a smooth, slick surface and bump into each other?

 

Hi Laura, thanks for asking -- since we don't have the game in hand and the entity who inquired about it didn't provide many details, we'd have to estimate size by the US 25-cent piece they included in one photo. A quarter is about 29/32", or 24mm, in diameter, so that would make the hinge about two inches, or 5cm, long, and then the entire box about 17 inches, or, um, er, what, 42cm or so? An approximation...

The illustrated disks are wooden. The dark grey things situated beneath each of the disks are some kind of pads or cushions made of felt or some felt-like material. The felt pads seem not to be attached, or are no longer attached, to the wooden disks.

 

Are the pieces slightly convex on one side and concave on the other? I'm thinking maybe a crokinole-type game.

 

I am thinking of how it could be played. I am also ignoring the baseball theme.

Without a supplied field of play, any table would do. A type of bocci-shuffleboard that simply uses the edge of the table as a goal. The calipers to measure the closest to the edge.

That's all I've got.

PS: I dislike the new google image search, but that's a rant for a different section.

 

Hey BG.....I've come here for 1st Nations help.......so y'know were all about helping you for games !!!

this is what I've come up with.......off the cuff.


https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/vtg-1957-capital-shuffle-board-1794447714



and..

https://canadianhomeleisure.ca/table-shuffleboard-rules-scoring/

( last photo........ u can see the Cubbies logo...)


both would need the compass.....the other sticks....??????

 

I'd go with these pieces being old. If they were made after WWII I'd expect different images and very likely materials other than wood. Unless it were a specific reproduction of an old game, the manufacturer would want more up-to-date imagery and parts.

 

Shuffle board was my immediat reaction ( 4 pucks )

I'd contact the shuffle board makers thet Komok cites info@canadianhomeleisure.ca

 

Observation: Upper lid? is made of mahogany and bottom appears to be made of pine (two sets joined?). Closing the lid would cause the components to dislodge unless there was something holding them securely, which is not apparent in the photos. Nails were used to capture the hinge to the bottom and screws used to attach the top (lid?).
Many questions.

 

I think the screws are replacements .....the other side looks only to be nails ....

 

Why two wood species?

 

could the lid be a later replacement ?
or , as BG infers ....a homemade item..

 

I suspect an idea not accepted by game companies.

 

Hi everyone! One significant correction to the information we earlier provided, but first, an even more heartfelt appreciation -- it's sincerely gratifying to have received so many responses (we weren't counting on receiving even one in reply to a question on such an oddball item), and we really are grateful for each and every bit of input, so please, don't think otherwise and don't anyone get peeved if we try to tighten the focus a little bit and zero in on what we were originally asking.

The correction involves our having stupidly gotten blindered in trying to estimate the size of the thing based on the close-up of the 25-cent piece amid the playing pieces. We hadn't been provided any figures on the size of the box, but we forgot that we had been told the size of the disks, which are not the 3 inches plus (circa 8cm) in diameter that we estimated, but instead just under 5 inches (about 12cm). So the entire box is evidently not circa 17 inches but more like 24 (two feet / 59-60cm). Sorry about that. Sometimes three heads are dumber than one.

That also means the hinges are much closer to 3 inches in length and not the 2 inches we'd also erroneously guessed. And it's just those sort of details in the hardware that we're hoping could definitively say the box (and by extension the whole item and its playing pieces) in fact can or can't be older than such-&-such -- if for instance we saw Philips-head screws in there (and it could be determined they were original to the box construction and not replacements), we'd know it wasn't built before the early 1930s. We doubt any such useful details are apparent in the images we were given, but we thought some of the cabinetry and tool-&-hardware experts on board here might spot something we couldn't have even thought of.

The game has already been discussed at our own Baseball Games forum, of course, so yes, as several of you have guessed, it's all but certain it was some sort of shuffleboard game, all but certain it's a one-of-a-kind homemade item (it was clearly never a commercial product, although as Mr Ransom agreed, it could possibly have been a prototype / demo), some sort of blanket or cushion (possibly a very large folded playing mat) would have been necessary to keep the implements from tumbling around inside the box (we should have made it clear there's nothing to suggest the game is even close to complete with all its original parts), and the wooden calipers were meant to be used similarly to the biter bit / micrometer in curling. We have not been told by the game's owner if the bottom sides of the disks are concave or flat. At least some of the wooden disks are not attached to the felt disks (maybe none of them are). It's possible each of the wooden disks was originally attached to a corresponding felt disk and the adhesive has simply failed over the years. If this were the case, it might suggest the game was intended for play on a wood floor, and the felt was provided to prevent the "pucks" from scratching the floorboards. The ballplayer images in no way imply this was any sort of baseball game per se -- a number of 19th-Century indoor bowling games, for example, involve wooden bowling pins decorated with images of ballplayers, and several antique boardgames are decorated gloriously with baseball imagery but have nothing at all to do with baseball in their gameplay. Sorry about the extensive footnotes there, but we didn't want any of you wasting your time barking up the wrong tree on our behalf.

What we're concerned about, though, is not the method of play but rather the age of the thing. Don't be misled by the 19th-Century imagery, which is often seen in games made right through the WWI era (as well in 21st-Century "retro" games). Mr Ransom's knowledgeable guess that the box lid is mahogany (we would not have recognized that) and the box bottom pine, and his observation that the hinges are attached half by screws and half by nails, are both intriguing bits of information, thank you sir. We'll add the information that the righthand hinge is attached to the lid by screws and to the box bottom by nails, as you've seen, but as you may be unable to see, the lefthand hinge, conversely, is attached to the lid by nails and to the bottom by screws.

Thanks again for everyone's input so far -- we look forward to more, so please continue! If there are any further details we can provide, or any questions we can try to answer, please don't hesitate to ask!

 

I go with shuffleboard with the straight sticks (2) being the push rods (without the wye). Perhaps with piece of felt on the push end; like a cue stick? It would pretty much mean it would be played on a table. My guess is that the top is the most recent repair and that some cushioning parts were left out. I think a logical age would be the 20's.

 

Hey, in case anyone here is still even slightly interested, we have an update, a clarification, on the wooden box. The box lid's interior (sorry, Mr Ransom) is not mahogany, but instead probably pine, same as the box bottom, but covered with mahogany-pattern contact paper (that is, adhesive shelf liner). That stuff became hugely popular starting in about 1970, although it may go back to around the 1930s. Of course, that doesn't mean the contact-paper lining was original to the game's box -- it could have been added to a box actually made in the 1880s (or the 1480s for that matter) at any point after 1970 (or the 1930s -- the origin of contact paper is strangely difficult to pinpoint). So, additional new information gets us exactly not a single Angstrom unit closer to putting a date to the box.

 

good hunting !!!

 

I remember covering a very small and plain bookcase with that contact paper.