Among the pandemic shortages (along with toilet paper) are chess sets, whose sales have soared in response to the Netflix series "The Queen's Gambit." Chess sets, even wooden ones (as opposed to sets made of exotic materials), can be expensive. The NY Times explain why:
"If you bought a wooden chess set after watching “The Queen’s Gambit,” the price you paid was most likely dictated by just four pieces.
"The knights alone can account for as much as 50 percent of the cost of a nice wooden set. While the rest of the pieces can be machine-made, the knights are carved by hand to resemble the head of a horse, a tedious process to make sure all four are exactly the same.
"The knights in the set used in World Chess Championship matches ($310 for the pieces and $220 for the board) were inspired by a horse carving from the Parthenon in Athens, said Ilya Merenzon, the chief executive of World Chess, the company that licenses the rights to the matches. The process of creating the set when it was redesigned in 2013 required extensive back-and-forth communication with carvers in India to discuss minutiae like the horse’s smile.
"About 10 people specialize in carving knights for the World Chess sets, Mr. Merenzon said. It takes about two weeks to produce 100 sets, with a set of knights requiring about six hours to carve, he said.
...
"In the higher-end sets, “you can literally see the teeth carved into the horse’s mouth,” said Noelle Kendrick, the House of Staunton’s business development director. “They are extremely detailed. You can see the mane, the rivets of the mane, if it has a flowing mane.”
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Here's a related article:
‘The Queen’s Gambit’ Sends Chess Set Sales Soaring by Marie Fazio,
and here's a blog post on Knights:
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