Review on Magnetic Travel Chess Set by Yellow Mountain Imports: Perfect Portable Entertainment on the Go! by Michael Boyle

I bought several of these sets about 1.5 years ago and the quality has been very good. I have to admit I was impressed. These sets come in handy when I play correspondence chess online. I set up several small chessboards to analyze the moves in some of my games. A few weeks ago I decided to order two more sets as gifts. After reading some reviews recently I decided to open the boxes to make sure there weren't any problems. To my great surprise, the chess pieces in both sets were full of problems. The chessboards were fine, but the pieces weren't. I noticed that the quality has dropped significantly. The detailing was bad. Some parts looked like someone had used spray paint to cover up poor paintwork. In addition, the color of many items was faded and/or blistered, and the magnets fell out of many items. The latter can be easily fixed by gluing. However, after realizing that there were so many things to fix, combined with the above issues, I decided the sets should come back. What really sealed the deal (returning the kits) was that I pulled out previously purchased kits and decided to compare the quality of the parts. The quality difference was day and night. I also noticed that the designs of the pieces were slightly different, as evidenced by the shape of the king. By the way, there were no instructions in the box either, and you don't need them either.