Is this the rarest jigsaw puzzle in the world?

Did you know that there is an ultra rare blue version of these solid colored springbok puzzles? I didn’t, and in my research I’ve only been able to confirm two copies of this puzzle in existence. I have a story to tell so buckle in, but before i get to that, i just want to say a really big. Thank you to everyone who has signed up for my new patreon. I am totally floored by your support and i just cannot wait to keep posting even more exclusive videos.

Over there. I’ve already been putting up a bunch of time lapses, some extra clips and for the bonus video this month. I recently came across an essay that i wrote in high school all about jigsaw puzzles. I wrote this in 2006, so it’s been a little while i have not read this essay since then, so i thought that I would film myself doing a dramatic reading of this essay, so that’ll be exclusive over on patreon. So if you want to sign up, the link will be right down below and remember that everybody at three dollars a month and above everybody gets all the same perks.

Okay. So now let me tell you about my search for the solid blue puzzle. Actually, first, if you don’t know what these puzzles are, these were released by springbok in 1964.

This one is called a little red riding hoods hood and it is a solid red puzzle. This one is snow white without the seven dwarves it is a solid white puzzle and then there’s also a brown one, which is more rare.

I haven’t been able to get my hands on one, but that one is called a close-up of the three bears. As far as i know, this series of three puzzles were the first solid colored puzzles ever released, okay, so uh. First, i had to go grab a sweater because it is so cold in this room. I was literally like shivering trying to tell you the story. I decided to keep with the blue theme to match this blue puzzle.

I’M about to tell you about so our story begins over Christmas. I was reading this website called robspuzzlepage.com. You know, as you do, over the holidays. His site is mostly about like mechanical puzzles, but he does have a page about interesting jigsaw, puzzles and there’s a little blurb about this red puzzle, but then, underneath that he mentions that there was a solid blue version of this puzzle called little boy.

Blue comes home. Now this was the first i had ever heard of a solid blue puzzle from springbok, but both of the links were broken on his site, so that was a little bit of a dead end. But around the same time i had found this spreadsheet, which was put together by puzzlehobby.com. This is the most comprehensive list of springbok puzzles.

I’Ve ever seen like every single thing is on there. They also have the year of release. They have the serial number. This was not released by springbok themselves. This was compiled by fans, so it might not be like a hundred percent complete, but this is like as complete of a list as we’re probably ever going to have so scrolling through this spreadsheet.

We can see that little boy, blue comes home, sure enough, it’s on there and the serial number is directly after the red white and brown solid, color puzzles. So, of course, i started googling, but this puzzle didn’t show up anywhere on the internet, not ebay and not worth point not reddit. I did find one reddit post of another person asking about this puzzle but uh there weren’t any replies. So at this point i’m just like maybe this puzzle like never even existed, you know maybe it’s something they just put in the catalog but never actually produced, but i wasn’t going to let it go that easily. It is time to put on my detective hat.

So. Okay, i started by emailing springbok uh. They never got back to me, which, to be honest, i didn’t really expect them to you know. The company has been sold so many times that the people who work there now don’t really have anything to do with the vintage puzzles. I also emailed bits and pieces, which is a puzzle catalog and company – that’s been around since the 80s and they have some puzzle.

Experts on staff that i’ve gotten some information from before, but they never sold springbok puzzles in their catalog. So they could not help me with this okay. So then i emailed linda, who runs puzzlehobby.com, which is the site that has that spreadsheet and it was so crazy. We had never been in contact before and we emailed each other at the exact same time like within a half hour of each other.

She emailed me at the same time that i emailed her. She was asking me if i would be interviewed for the magazine that they’re releasing on their site, so you know we did the interview and i asked her about the the blue puzzle and the spreadsheet. She told me that that spreadsheet had been compiled by other people. Um not her, so she herself couldn’t really help me with it, but she suggested that i join some facebook groups for vintage springbok puzzles. Okay, so i joined these facebook groups and my timing was impeccable because the very first post that i see mentions little boy blue, like what are the chances?

That’S so crazy. So the post was from a woman named julie who was showing her entire springbok collection, and these photos are incredible. She has 1095 vintage springbok puzzles, like oh, my god goals dreams. I want to go there. I want to be there, but in her post she says that she has basically all of them, except for little boy, blue.

So anyway, i messaged julie to you know, ask her what she knows about that puzzle and we just start chatting about puzzles and then one night completely out of the blue. I was literally like in the other room, just watching jeopardy. She sends me this screenshot and it is a picture of little boy, blue and i was just like – oh my god, julie julie. Where did you get this? Where did you find this tell me everything?

So this screenshot comes from a site called springbok fever, and that was actually one of the sites linked on rob’s puzzle page, but the link was broken and you know i just never thought to look beyond that. But the link that julie sent me was the site. Archived on the wayback machine – and i am just so thankful that this site was archived, because this is the most comprehensive resource i have ever seen about. Springbok puzzles like there are puzzles on there that i had never even heard of there are so many like fun facts about all of the puzzles. Everything is meticulously organized and like hyperlinked between each other.

All of my videos about vintage springbok puzzles will now be way better researched now that i have this site as a resource, but the site does only go up to 1973, so it’s really only about the very very early springbok puzzles. I want to give full credit to mike helen. This was his site um, i emailed him. I have not heard back, but anyway back to what little boy blue so according to his site, it turns out that this was a promotional item made for the new york city, restaurant serendipity. It came out in 1965, which is one year after these solid colored puzzles.

Came out, i guess the reason why it is so rare is because it was only a promotional item, so it was never sold widely. You know, i don’t know how many of them were actually produced. Looking at the picture, it looks fairly similar to these puzzles, except that there’s no graphic on the front. It’S just a solid blue and then the first release of these puzzles didn’t have any text on the side. This one is actually the re-release from 1970, so it does have the text on the side, but the serendipity puzzle from 1965 also has the text on the side.

I have not seen a picture of the puzzle itself, but i would imagine it is this exact puzzle only blue, obviously also the picture on springbok fever is credited. There is a name there. I looked up that name on one of those like sketchy reverse lookup sites. I did find an email address, so i sent an email. I have not heard back.

I don’t know if i even emailed to the right person and unfortunately it’s a pretty common name. So i don’t know if i’ll ever find this person, but remember at the beginning of this video i did say i knew of two of these puzzles in existence. So there is another part to this story. I have been in touch with a person who currently owns a copy of little boy blue. However, they did not want to be a part of this video so to protect their privacy.

I really can’t say who this person is or where the puzzle is. I also have not actually seen a photo of their copy of the puzzle, but i do believe that they have one and that’s it that’s the story, so i am putting it out there to the world. Does anybody else know anything else about this puzzle? Do you have a copy of this puzzle? Does your grandmother have one like sitting in her attic?

Oh wait. There was one more thing i was going to say, which is that i learned on the springbok fever website that, in addition to the blue puzzle, they also re-released the red white and brown puzzles exclusively for serendipity. So those copies of the puzzles have an extra line of text on the front of the box, but otherwise they are identical to the wide releases. So on springbok fever he has a picture of the red one, but i guess the white and the brown ones are even more rare because even on this website, that literally has everything like even he doesn’t have a picture of the white and the brown ones. So again, if your like grandparents have a copy of these puzzles in their closet, go check to see if they have that extra line of text, because you could be sitting on an extremely extremely rare and valuable puzzle, [ Music, ].

So, okay, i was actually planning on this video being all about my full collection of solid colored puzzles, because i have quite a few of them now, but i’m pretty sure that if i did that all in the same video it would be like an hour long Because i have so much to say about all of my other puzzles, so i’m going to wrap it up here and then next week i’m going to talk about all the rest of my solid color puzzles. So i would love to know in the comments. Do you have any hobbies that have like a very rare item? I just think that kind of thing is so fascinating. I mean that’s what my dad’s, like anvil collection is all about.

He has so many one-of-a-kind, completely unique rare anvils, and if you like this type of story um, he wrote a book all about his anvil collection. There are so many stories in there about. You know anvils that you’re not gon na find literally anywhere else. It is such a deep dive into a very specific, very niche topic and clearly i have taken after him on that front. So your code word for the comments will be blue, don’t forget to head over to patreon.

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All right well happy puzzling, and i will see you all in my next one to talk about all of my solid colored puzzles. Oh, i can’t wait. I have so many things to tell you [ Music ], you