Rosewood xiangqi set

Some years ago, I got myself a very nice xiangqi set with chunky ebony pieces, and, quite recently, a similar set with bamboo pieces. One set with very dark pieces, one set with very light pieces .... I regularly see a set with rosewood pieces on-line; rosewood would fit nicely between ebony and bamboo, but these sets are always with asking prices which are way above what I'm willing to spend on a xiangqi set (no matter how nice it is). 

Until I saw a rosewood set on Temu, for very little (shipping was included; it was just shipped over land, so it took quite a while to reach me, but I wasn't in any rush). Finally, I could scratch that proverbial itch!

The rosewood set came in the same case as the other two.

And with the same faux leather board.

You have to admit: the rosewood stones fit very nicely colour-wise between the very dark ebony and the very light bamboo stones, right?

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Sticker set

I stumbled across this large sticker sheet of a xiangqi board and pieces:

Quite unusual, and of course it inspired me to use this to create a physical xiangqi board and pieces. Came across a cheap travel set for go, and the board looked exactly the right size for the dimensions of the 'sticker board'.

Works a treat! The 'sticker board' also has some holographic effects 'built in', which really shows when the light hits it from a certain angle.

As to the xiangqi pieces, the go pieces that came with the go board were too small for the 'sticker pieces', so I decided to use red and yellow glass pebbles.

Stickers for the pieces were stuck to the flat (rather than the curved) sides of the glass pebbles. And this is what the completed set looks like:

Looks pretty good as far as I'm concerned!

Because the pieces 'lie' on their curved side, they wobble slightly when added to the board, which gives the whole an interesting little extra.

And I also found a nice little bag to keep the pieces in!

Metal xiangqi set

This xiangqi set popped up on eBay. First picture in the listing showed a very nice wooden box, which opens up and serves as the board.

The buy-it-now price wasn't exactly low, but what interested me was the mention of 'metallic' pieces.

I asked the seller whether that meant the pieces just looked 'metallic' (due to the paint used or something similar) or whether they were actually made of metal. Very helpfully, the seller posted a short video clip in which he (very carefully!) hit one piece against another. Sound was unmistakable: these were actually made of metal!

So I bought it ...

Very nice board indeed ...

... and very nice metal (!) pieces, quite heavy as well.

Despite the highish price, very happy to add this set to the collection!