All pieces were assembled by hand from molded parts and are connected by a metal screw, resulting in small variations in weight and height. The latter could also happen due to restorations.
The breakout of WWII during the tournament caused a severe shortage of raw materials, leading to the use of remnants from earlier production runs. In the ensuing chaos, workers no longer strictly sorted the pieces, causing public sets to become mixed up, as seen in our example. Although smaller, the black King is much heavier, which illustrates the manual filling and assembly. Shrinkage does not account for the smaller pieces, since it is only 1 to 2 percent at most. The black pieces are painted for an ebony look, but this paint caused a chemical welding, resulting in black pieces that cannot be unscrewed, while the white ones can. The set is considered a 1939 set, but probably is early 1940s.
My set came not in the famous iconic box in the form of a big Rook. Those were very brittle and often lost. However, it is more likely that it originally had a cardboard box, just like the tournament set did. This set came in a box of the "King" set made by Reyes, which was used in 1981 in the Candidates Tournament in Buenos Aires. That set was inspired by the 1978 Olympic set designed by the Campo brothers.
The original pamphlet is an extremely rare item of historical chess memorabilia and gives interesting information. It is so rare that others on the internet need to use my pictures of it.
