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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;BaseballGames, post: 4535588, member: 7826&quot;]Hi everyone!&nbsp; One significant correction to the information we earlier provided, but first, an even more heartfelt appreciation -- it&#039;s sincerely gratifying to have received so many responses (we weren&#039;t counting on receiving even one in reply to a question on such an oddball item), and we really are grateful for each and every bit of input, so please, don&#039;t think otherwise and don&#039;t anyone get peeved if we try to tighten the focus a little bit and zero in on what we were originally asking.</p><p><br /></p><p>The correction involves our having stupidly gotten blindered in trying to estimate the size of the thing based on the close-up of the 25-cent piece amid the playing pieces.&nbsp; We hadn&#039;t been provided any figures on the size of the box, but we forgot that we <i>had</i> been told the size of the disks, which are not the 3 inches plus (circa 8cm)&nbsp; in diameter that we estimated, but instead just under 5 inches (about 12cm).&nbsp; So the entire box is evidently not circa 17 inches but more like 24 (two feet / 59-60cm).&nbsp; Sorry about that.&nbsp; Sometimes three heads are dumber than one.</p><p><br /></p><p>That also means the hinges are much closer to 3 inches in length and not the 2 inches we&#039;d also erroneously guessed.&nbsp; And it&#039;s just those sort of details in the hardware that we&#039;re hoping could definitively say the box (and by extension the whole item and its playing pieces) in fact can or can&#039;t be older than such-&amp;-such -- if for instance we saw Philips-head screws in there (<i>and</i> it could be determined they were original to the box construction and <i>not</i> replacements), we&#039;d know it wasn&#039;t built before the early 1930s.&nbsp; We doubt any such useful details are apparent in the&nbsp; images we were given, but we thought some of the cabinetry and tool-&amp;-hardware experts on board here might spot something we couldn&#039;t have even thought of.</p><p><br /></p><p>The game has already been discussed at our own <i>Baseball Games</i> forum, of course, so yes, as several of you have guessed, it&#039;s all but certain it was some sort of shuffleboard game, all but certain it&#039;s a one-of-a-kind homemade item (it was clearly never a commercial product, although as Mr Ransom agreed, it could possibly have been a prototype / demo), some sort of blanket or cushion (possibly a very large folded playing mat) would have been necessary to keep the implements from tumbling around inside the box (we should have made it clear there&#039;s nothing to suggest the game is even close to complete with all its original parts), and the wooden calipers were meant to be used similarly to the biter bit / micrometer in curling. We have not been told by the game&#039;s owner if the bottom sides of the disks are concave or flat.&nbsp; At least <i>some</i> of the wooden disks are not attached to the felt disks (maybe none of them are).&nbsp; It&#039;s possible each of the wooden disks was originally attached to a corresponding felt disk and the adhesive has simply failed over the years.&nbsp; If this were the case, it might suggest the game was intended for play on a wood floor, and the felt was provided to prevent the &quot;pucks&quot; from scratching the floorboards.&nbsp; The ballplayer images <i>in no way imply</i> this was any sort of baseball game <i>per se</i> -- a number of 19th-Century indoor bowling games, for example,&nbsp; involve wooden bowling pins decorated with images of ballplayers, and several antique boardgames are decorated gloriously with baseball imagery but have nothing at all to do with baseball in their gameplay.&nbsp; Sorry about the extensive footnotes there, but we didn&#039;t want any of you wasting your time barking up the wrong tree on our behalf.</p><p><br /></p><p><i>What we&#039;re concerned about</i>, though, is <i>not</i> the method of play but rather the <i>age</i> of the thing.&nbsp; Don&#039;t be misled by the 19th-Century imagery, which is often seen in games made right through the WWI era (as well in 21st-Century &quot;retro&quot; games).&nbsp; Mr Ransom&#039;s knowledgeable guess that the box lid is mahogany (we would not have recognized that) and the box bottom pine, and his observation that the hinges are attached half by screws and half by nails, are both intriguing bits of information, thank you sir.&nbsp; We&#039;ll add the information that the righthand hinge is attached to the lid by screws and to the box bottom by nails, as you&#039;ve seen, but as you may be unable to see, the lefthand hinge, conversely, is attached to the lid by nails and to the bottom by screws.</p><p><br /></p><p>Thanks again for everyone&#039;s input so far -- we look forward to more, so please&nbsp; continue!&nbsp; If there are any further details we can provide, or any questions we can try to answer, please don&#039;t hesitate to ask![/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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