When I was in elementary school, the PTA would occasionally sponsor a fund raiser where families could donate things they no longer wanted to the PTA. The PTA would then have a yard sale-like event at the school on a Saturday, with the proceeds going to the PTA. One of my friend's mom was always in the PTA leadership so our group of friends would get enlisted to help set up and take down.
One year one of these showed up as a donated item -
The combination game board with pocket pool, check, checkers, backgammon, and a number of other games really caught my eye. When I asked what the price was going to be, the PTA reps gave a price that was on the edge of what I had on me. I asked if there was any chance I could buy it? and maybe get a discount for helping? No dice on the discount at the front end, but I was told if it hadn't sold by lunch I could have it for whatever price I had suggested. I was much more interested in the action that day, keeping close to it in case anyone looked like they might want to buy it. I may or may not have pointed out to a potential buyer that the chess pieces weren't all there, and a few other dings on the frame I had noticed...
Anyway, I'm obviously adding it to this thread because I won the day, took it home, and it became the source of many, many hours of imaginative fun. Like most kids, the original intended games were not the only games played on it. In addition to a lot of pocket pool, I invented games that involved action figures and bunkers to play with siblings and friend, invented another die-based game inspired by the movie Cloak and Dagger that made use of clay mazes and a spy trying to sneak in, steal something and get out. There was a random die action that controlled the people in the maze until they saw the spy at which point I had to play the honor system and try and play them the same as the hero...at least to some extent. And there was a race car game that evolved out of this where the cars were all controlled by random die rolls that determined their actions and speed which I translated into one of my first attempts at drawing a comic book as a kid.
It looks so simple, but that game was central to my childhood and subject to rediscovery for years and years until long after all the pieces had been broken or lost. Turned out those rings for the pocket pool game could shatter when they got older and were hit hard enough...
