A giant wooden Shkolnik III set!

I found this ’60s–’70s Soviet set on Etsy which is appropriately named ‘Giants’ considering the king stands 17 cm tall (6.7")! Even the pawns are 8 cm (3.1").

I’m rather excited by this find, as the set looks A LOT like the carbolite Shkolnik III (except the pawns look more like Shkolnik I)! For reference, here is the Shkolnik III I have in my possession:

I've seen that nice plastic version for sale in mint shape...Very tempting.

Yeah they’re quite common on Etsy. They usually go for C$40–80. Sometimes as high as C$130, but I wouldn’t pay more than C$80 for them personally.

ChessUSSR has quite a few Shkolnik II and III sets available (and one Shkolnik I), but I find their shipping cost to be unreasonable. The carbolite set shown above I ordered from SovietChessUSSRGift, and my recent order is from Arhontshop. Both still have Shkolniks available, and they offer free shipping.

But ChessUSSR has a blue Shkolnik II available, which is pretty wild.

SovietChessUSSRGift also has one, but with red finials on the black king and queen for some reason. I think they could be from a different set, because the red king finial is a lot rounder than the black finial of the blue king. It makes me wonder if there are red sets out there. I’ve never seen one, but I would love to get one if it does exist.

You would think red would be fairly common for Soviet sets, and yet the only colors I’ve come across are these two blue ones.

I don't know how you come up with such a plethora of way cool stuff...but...your a Goddess!