Books

Board games: Collectors
Aren’t Playing, Just Buying

by RITA REIF

BOARD GAMES BOLDLY emblazoned with the images of Popeye, Cootie Nancy Drew and Superman are among today’s more visually arresting collectibles. They are also among the least expensive, although buyers complain that prices are on the rise, with some selling for as much as $300.

Collectors of such 1950’s and 60’s ephemera are seeking games packaged with powerful graphics borrowed from comic books, television, movies and the album jackets of rock recordings.

The popularity of these post World War II collectibles follows an earlier interest in 19th century board games that were elaborately decorated with fussy typography and images. Some of these games command considerably higher prices, as much as $8,000

About 190 such games can be seen in “Victorian Pleasures: American Board and Table Games of the 19th Century From the Liman Collection,” which is at Columbia University’s art gallery in Schermerhorn Hall, Broadway at 116th Street, through Jan. 25. The catalogue is $10.

“People collect games that look great but are often the least challenging to play,” said Rick Polizzi, the co-author with Fred Schaefer of the new book “Spin Again: Board Games of the 50’s and 60’s” (Chronicle Books).

“Back in the 1950’s and 60’s, game producers paid more attention to creating big splashy box covers than to making games with content.” Most of the vividly graphic games, which often proved unplayable, sold poorly and soon disappeared from toy stores. Because these are now scarce, they are in demand as collectibles.

“The best games, including Monopoly and Scrabble, were mass produced and are still being made,” Mr. Polizzi noted. “There’s no scarcity of vintage sets at flea markets and garage sales.”

In 1955, Transogram developed a game based on TV’s “Dragnet” in 1959, the company marketed the nearly identical “Perry Mason.”

Mr. Polizzi, an independent film maker in Los Angeles, said that even if such games were scarce, they still might be ignored by collectors because their graphics are dull. “Take Scrabble, a brown box with the

Bright packaging,

inspired by comic

books, TV and

rock albums, is the

name of the game.

word Scrabble on it,” Mr. Polizzi said. It looks the same today, more or less, as it did 30 years ago.”

Most of the 180 board games illustrated in “Spin Again” are from Mr. Polizzi’s collection of 800. He began collecting less than three years ago when he found an old “Beverly Hillbillies” Game, which he had played as a child. It cost $1. “Luckily, I still find games at garage sales for as little as 50 cents,” he said. “The most, I’ve ever paid was $145. It was for my favorite game, ‘The Twilight Zone.'”

Most of the games that Mr. Polizzi buys by mail and at flea markets cost $40 to $50. Among the exceptions is one of the four games from the 1960’s, modeled on the TV adventure series “The Man From UNCLE”: The Thrush Ray Gun Affair, a rarity that commands $120 to $130.

Television’s profound impact on board games is seen in just about every type of game. In addition to those based on crime shows (“Dragnet” and “Perry Mason”) and adventure series (Hopalong Cassidy,” “Gunsmoke” and “77 Sunset Strip”). games spun off of superheroes and rock stars after television exposure. The Beatles, Flip Your Wig Game appeared after the Liverpudlians made their United States debut on “The Ed Sullivan Show” in 1964.

Politics and Sputnik also inspired games. The box for The Kennedys, produced in 1962, shows John, Robert, Edward and Jacqueline Kennedy as portraits carved on Mount Rushmore. In Astro Launch, from 1963, space wars are played on a board depicting the universe with a translucent Earth at the center.

Prices are rising for ephemera like The Beatles, Flip Your Wig Game, which Milton Bradley marketed after the British band made its American debut on “The Ed Sullivan Show” in 1964.

Board games from the 1920’s to the 70’s and books on the subject have been stocked for more than a decade at Mythology, 370 Columbus Avenue at 77th Street in Manhattan. “Board games are escalating in price, and the market is beginning to dry up,” said Bill Bailey, the store’s owner. “At first we paid from $10 to $50 for games. That enabled us to sell all of them for under $100.” But the most graphic games are rapidly disappearing, he said, and they now range from $25 to $295.

REMEMBER THE NEEDIESTI

While most of today’s collectors pursue 20th-century games, others concentrate on the Victorian examples. In July, a record price at auction $8,250 was paid for The New Parlor Game: Baseball, from 1869, at a sale in Wethersfield, Conn. Previously, the most expensive game sold at auction was The Man in the Moon, a wooden board game from 1901. It brought $6,050 at the Robert Skinner Gallery in Bolton, Mass, in 1968.

The 19th-century examples on view at Columbia University represent a small sampling of the board games owned by Ellen and Arthur Liman of New York; she is a writer and painter, he is a lawyer. Mrs. Liman said that their collection of about 1,000 games, made mostly between the Civil War and 1900, reflects the peak years of rich coloring and fanciful lithographic images. The Limans began collecting 11 years ago when they bought a map game at a garage sale for $4.

Astro Launch, made by Ohio Art in 1963, came onto the market after the Soviet Union’s Sputnik satellites went into orbit.

The Outlook

Thursday
August 17, 1995

Life/Arts

ENTERTAINMENT / D3

TELEVISION / D4

COMICS / D5

Story by Saul Rubin STAFF WRITER

Photos by Ed Carreon STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Encountering a game played in your youth is a lot like meeting up with a long-lost childhood friend. In both cases you’re sure to spot the familiar features and the reunion will trigger a wave of memories.

That’s the experience that envelops you as you enter Rick Polizzi’s game room. It’s crammed with dozens of board games, mostly from the ’50s and ’60s. Mousetrap. Chutes and Ladders.

Mousetrap. Chutes and Ladders. Operation. Life. Easy Money. Go to the Head of the Class. The gang’s all here.

During the past decade, the West Los Angeles collector has accumulated more than 1,300 board games, mostly from those key baby-boomer years. Many are stored here, while others are kept in his hometown, New Orleans.

In addition to their nostalgic value, the games are a valuable historical reference. They also reveal how kids once spent those inane playtime hours.

Many of the games were spinoffs from popular television shows and often were produced with little thought to the game itself, Polizzi says. If the show was popular, game companies slapped its logo and a picture of its stars on the cover. That was enough to trigger sales.

That was true of Polizzi’s first purchase, the Beverly Hillbillies game. He saw it after his wife dragged him into a thrift store to browse.

“I thought, ‘Wow, that looks cool,” he says during an interview at his apartment, surrounded by his collection. “There was nothing great about the game. It was a plain board game.”

The purchase set him on a 10-year buying spree that’s filled his shelves with the likes of Face the Facts and the Camp Granada Game.

Polizzi often invites friends over to play these games. He enjoys watching the facial expressions when they come across the familiar boards and pieces.

“Everyone remembers that one,” he says, displaying the Rock ’em, Sock ’em robot fighting game. Players controlled two fighting figures in a plastic boxing ring. A well-placed jab could “knock the block off” the opposing fighter.

Polizzi thinks that a Hopalong Cassidy board game was the first spinoff from a television show. The head of Milton Bradley at the time, James Shea, observed the character being mobbed by adoring young fans. He saw the possibility and launched a game aimed at kids with a Hopalong theme, Polizzi said. Hundreds of others followed.

Even with the advent of computer games and more high-tech diversions for kids, simple board games have remained a constant in the games world.

“The evidence is that they can exist side by side,” says Jodi Levin, spokeswoman with the Toy Manufacturers of America, an association that watches trends in the toy industry.

Baby boomers

get nostalgic

for games of

their childhood

• • • • • • • • • • •

Polizzi says most baby-boomer games, like those above, were spinoffs of popular television shows and often were produced with little thought to the game itself. In addition to his collection, Polizzi has written two coffee-table books about board games spanning the ’40s through the ’70s.