Featured Mahjong

The problem with old mahjong sets is that even a small one (unless it's REALLY small) weighs a lot.

The other problem is that just because it's old, everybody assumes they're worth a buttload of money.

That set up there is NOT worth $1,000. Very few are. Mahjong sets were made in their MILLIONS in the early 1900s.

Another issue is that in a lot of instances, the cases or boxes which the sets were transported and stored in, were often just afterthoughts. In a lot of instances, they were made of literal cardboard - you can imagine how long that lasts when it has to lug around a 10, 20lb mahjong set for the rest of its life. Most of them don't last. Not even the plastic ones - they end up cracking, or splitting on the edges and suddenly BOOM!!....grandma's 70, 80-year-old mahjong set is all over the floor!!

Whoops!!

I've seen loads of cases held together by electrical tape, sticky tape, string...god knows what else. A lot of them need complete re-casing, because the original box or whatever is completely shot. The cases were never designed to last.

Except in instances where the case is REALLY high quality, I don't think I've ever seen one that didn't need repairs.

People also love to assume that their sets are made of ivory. Again, VERY few are. 99% of the time, if it's made of a natural product, it's made of bone and bamboo. That's how they were made since the 1850s and 60s, when the game was invented.

 

I was surprised to see that the one I bought now is in very good condition, except for the missing handle and small worn bits on the inside, so that made me wonder if mine is as old as the one shown on invaluable, or if it's a much later version in the same style. The seller inherited it (or so he said), so he couldn't give me any info on when/where it was bought.

 

The second one you bought definitely looks more complete. Looks about the same age, 40s, 50s. Plastic sets became all the rage in the mid-1900s. Before then, they were all laboriously made by hand - 144 tiles - that's a LOT of handwork.

It's complete, the case looks to be in surprisingly good condition, which, as I said before, is not always the case. A new handle could easily be made for it out of leather or something, provided that the rest of the case is in good condition.

As for the other sets, they look OK, but $1,000 is insane.

 

The history of mahjong and mahjong sets is really interesting, and there's all kinds of myths about it, a lot of which (in fact, all of them) are not even the least bit true.

 

Of course we antiquers want to find the truth. But on the other hand, isn't the creation of so many myths evidence of a lively popular tradition?

 

I suppose, but it gets really annoying when people perpetuate these myths and then you gotta bust their bubbles over it.

 

@Shangas is it difficult to learn?

 

The game? No, not difficult to learn. I've been doing it since I was 14, 15 years old. So...over 20 years by now. My friends and I used to play in the library at school during lunchtime.

That said, there are MANY versions of the game.

American Mahjong, Filipino Mahjong, Singaporean Mahjong, Japanese Mahjong, Taiwanese Mahjong...the list goes on. There's at least half a dozen different styles. It can make the question "Do you play mahjong?" kinda hard to answer - because you gotta be REALLY specific about WHICH TYPE you play.

The type that most Chinese people will play, if you mention "mahjong" is what's known as "Cantonese Mahjong, AKA "Hong-Kong Mahjong", which is the most common type among Chinese communities. If you go to a major Chinese community in Chinatown or whatever, they're probably playing that. That's what I play with my friends.

The basics are easy enough. (These rules are for traditional Hong Kong mahjong)...

You have a set of tiles dealt out to you (13 tiles) and this is your "hand". The game is a take-and-discard, going around a square table in anticlockwise direction. The aim of the game is to build a winning hand of four melds (four groupings of tiles) and one pair (two matching tiles).

The first person to build that winning hand (14 tiles), wins the game.

Been played that way since the game was invented back about 1840, 1850-odd.

First Western exposure to mahjong was in the 1850s and 60s. The oldest mahjong sets that still exist TODAY (which are both in museums) were taken back to the States by an American diplomat, presumably as a souvenir of his time in China, and those dated to the 1870s.

 

That said, because there ARE so many variants of the game, not every mahjong set can be used to play every variant. It can make things really hard.

A CLASSICAL MAHJONG SET - the kind you pick up in Chinatown as a souvenir - will have 144 tiles (or usually, 148 - 144 playables, and 4 spares).

144 tiles is to play traditional Cantonese/Hong Kong mahjong - the type which most Chinese people will play. It's what I play with my friends at our Straits-Chinese Club here in town.

Classical set will look like this:



Exactly 144 tiles. This one's from my collection.

Japanese sets only have 136 tiles (no winds & flowers).

American sets have 152 tiles (144 + 8 jokers).

The list goes on. This is why I said, you gotta be REALLY specific about WHAT type you play. You can't just say "let's play mahjong!!"

A classical set has six suits:

Coins, Strings of Coins, Myriads of Coins. Also known as Circles, Bamboos, and Characters.

That's three.

Then the others are the Four Winds (North, East, South and West).

Then the Bonus Tiles, which are divided into Flowers, and Seasons.

That's the other three.

I play mahjong with my cousins during Chinese New Year. Oh man.

My cousins and I are playing Cantonese style, my sister-in-law and my brother only do Taiwan style...it gets confusing.

 

And the chips, the dice and that round thingy? Are these used in a specific variant of Mahjong?

 

The two oldest mahjong sets known to exist in the world today.



They were brought back to the USA by an American diplomat - George Bunker Glover, in the 1870s. Glover was stationed in Shanghai for most of his time in China, and Shanghai was a major manufacturing center for Mahjong sets, so it makes sense that he bought the sets there.

He returned to America in 1872 on leave, and donated the sets to museums in 1875, before heading back to China. Both sets are incomplete, but you can see that the basics of the game have changed very little in the past 150-odd years.

 

When are you going to show your version?

 

The chips are used in scoring the game (don't ask me how, I've never met anybody who could explain scoring to me, in 20 years of playing!!).

The "round thingy" is the wind indicator. Each round of mahjong is indicated by one of the four winds - starting with East, and moving around the table.

Every mahjong set has (or should have) a set of dice, usually 2, sometimes 3.

The dice are used to determine who goes first, and who is the dealer for each round of the game.

To play a game, you shuffle the tiles, stack them into four walls (if you're doing classical mahjong, that's four walls of 36 tiles each).

Then you roll the dice inside the walls to find the dealer. You count the numbers until you hit the dealer, then you use the same number to find the right spot for the dealer to break their wall.

So for example, if the dice roll 12, then you count around the table 12 times (going anticlockwise). Whoever '12' is, is the dealer. Then they count along their wall 12 tiles, and break the wall at that point.

The tiles before the break are the bonus wall, the tiles after break are where you start dealing out tiles to the other players, or they can take them themselves - it really depends on personal preferences.

Some people are real sticklers and insist on doing it "properly", others will just help themselves to tiles.

 

Wow, that is so interesting. I pulled my back out & still out of commission as soon I can I am going to get my Grandmothers & count. She played a lot with a group of ladies, same group since I was a kid. Thank you for that great explanation. I had no idea that mahjong has different version/styles. So you would need 4 players then in order to play?

 

The game is meant for four players, but I have done two-player and three-player, without altering any aspects of the game. In fact most of the time all I get is 2-3 players, since finding three people with nothing to do is like trying to catch a unicorn.

 

The area I live, people are always looking for players. I have been tempted but I had no clue how to play.

 

The biggest problem is knowing which version they play. In America, NMJL (National Mahjong League) rules generally apply. But there are groups which play Chinese mahjong as well.

 

This topic is interesting info for me, since I too have three sets that I have never researched. From I believe newest to oldest, here is a plastic set with 144 pieces, in a plastic covered cardboard box that is indeed falling apart:

 

This is an interesting discussion. Now I want to learn to play, whichever version I can. (Probably US, since that's where I live.)