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Message:: [QUOTE="Shangas, post: 10009029, member: 360"]The problem with mahjong sets is that they're EXTREMELY common. Literally thousands, millions, were produced every week, every YEAR in China, in the early 1900s. In the 1800s, mahjong was a Chinese game, played in China, by the Chinese, mostly in major cities like Shanghai, Peking, etc. Nobody had really heard of the game outside of China -- that's why when that diplomat guy showed up in the States in 1875 with two mahjong sets, they ended up in MUSEUMS because nobody had seen anything like that before. It was just such a novelty. But things changed in the early 20th century. Mahjong was a gigantic fad in the 1920s. EVERYBODY from the President of the United States down, was playing this game. As a result, workshops in Shanghai were cranking out mahjong sets every day of the week - which is saying a lot, because they were ALL made by hand. Every single tile, shelf, drawer, tile-face...carved, split, cut, sanded and dovetailed by hand. Just ONE set is a LOT of effort, so doing THOUSANDS a week is insane. The value of mahjong sets varies ENORMOUSLY. The ones which are worth HUGE money are the ones from the early 1900s. 1910s, 1920s, 1930s. Any set made BEFORE then is basically a unicorn - they're so rare and hard to find. The sets are almost always made of bone tile-faces, and bamboo tile-backs, dovetailed together, carved by hand, and painted by hand. But even among those really old antique sets from the 1900s, there's variations. You have sets, and you have sets. Remember, these were churned out in their THOUSANDS, so not every set was made to the same standard. Some are really cheap, shitty, knocked together and thrown into a box (literally), and others were finely handcrafted masterpieces made by expert cabinetmakers and woodworkers. Are there sets which are worth THOUSANDS of dollars? Yes. But these are the rare, handcrafted, really highly-detailed sets. They do exist, but they're pretty rare, and cost money. Your run-of-the-mill antique set from say 1925, goes anywhere from $200 in crappy condition, to maybe $1,000 in SPECTACULAR condition. But that depends on so many factors. Is the box in good condition? How detailed is it? Any engravings? Carvings? Brass/nickel hardware? What condition is the metalwork in? How good is the carving on the tiles? How good is the joinery? What's the bone-bamboo ratio? (yes, that matters!). Does it have all the instructions and accessories, etc? Re. bone & bamboo - the high quality sets have more bone than bamboo. A high quality set has tiles which are like 40, 50, or more percent bone, vs. bamboo. A middling-range set will have, usually, 40, 30% bone vs bamboo. A REALLY CHEAP set is like...10 or 20% bone. Prices for mahjong sets jump around enormously because of all these factors, as you can imagine. The prices I listed on my eBay, for example, are based on things like age, completeness, condition, and general, overall quality of the SET - condition of the case or box is often not useful since the cases or boxes, as I've mentioned before - rarely survived. That said, those prices are negotiable, so I don't necessarily expect to get those prices.[/QUOTE]

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