In Part 7.B of this series, we presented :
Like a Man Obsessed” – Dice Collectors Tell Their Story
and we examined the ancient dice collection housed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
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Joe is a friend of mine who collects dice. Or rather, Joe is a composite of a half dozen dice collectors I have known over the years and a few more that I’ve only known at a distance – over the internet, miles away.
And all of these folks are my friends. Or friends of friends. Which is true of all dice collectors since the dice themselves are, in a way, our mutual friends.
It’s not hard to like dice. They’re small and tactile. Warm once you’ve held them for a few minutes. And they have a musical quality about them too. That r-r-r-rattle when you shake them and the counterpoint when they hit the table and spin down to a stop.
So, are you ready?
Let’s talk dice.
The most unusual dice I have ever seen are the great-grand-daddy’s of them all : Authentic knucklebones. Real raw bone. Justin Michell has some of these on his site.
And then there’s the rollable d4’s that came through Kickstarter and are now available online at R4D4 Games and Robots on Shopify.
And of course we should mention the very well kept collections of Jennifer Asperheim (her Internet photos are set up just like a museum display) and all the dice in the collection shown on the Dice Collector site owned and operated by Kevin Cook.
But you might ask, What would I see if I went to a dice collector’s home?
Well, that all depends on the collector, but generally :
Dice of every size and shape you can imagine. And in all the colors of the rainbow. Piles of them. Lined up on shelves, and stored in boxes, and tins, and crates. Sometimes nice and neat and sometimes overflowing from whatever supposedly held them.
Just how large are these collections anyway?
Well, the largest dice collection I ever saw first hand had to be about a thousand dice or maybe a little more. Which is nothing compared to the collection amassed by Kevin Cook (mentioned above) that made the Guinness Book of World Records in 2004 at a little over 11,000 and has kept on growing since then. (I wonder when he’ll hit 100,000 dice? Probably sometime soon.)
But not all collections are this big. Some collectors buy just a few and keep them polished up nice and sit them on their desk, or in a shadow box, or even on their night table. Right next to the phone.
Handy to play with when the caller bores you to tears and when your thinker isn’t perking any too quick. R-r-r-rattle. And that’s just enough to unstick your thinker and get the mental coffee flowing.
Works every time.
Or so they tell me.
Not that I would ever do anything like that. Or be slow of thought – ever. Well, not more than once or twice in a while. That’s all. But now I’m off on a tangent.
Where did I put those dice? I need a little shake-me-up to get me back on track. 🙂
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In Part 8 of this series we will present :
