You might own one of the rarest puzzles in the world!

Today’s video is sponsored by Squarespace, get it because I’m in a square and in space hi, everyone welcome back to Karen puzzles. So today I want to tell you about some of the rarest puzzles that are out there that I am actively searching for. As you guys know, I’ve been collecting a lot of vintage puzzles, but there are some on my wish list that are so rare. I’M not even entirely sure that they existed in the first place, not to mention the one that is so expensive. It would literally be more than the cost of a month’s rent here at my apartment, but before I get to that, I want to mention one that I am looking for above everything else.

 

So, as you guys know, I’ve been collecting these kind of campy food themed puzzles from the Synergistics or research corporation, and I’ve been in touch with the son of the man who designed these spilt milk puzzles as well as these wet paint puzzles, and this is so Exciting look what he sent me. It is the Synergistics research catalog from 1981. This does not exist on the internet. You cannot find this anywhere, so these are some early prototypes of those puzzles. I just showed as well as all of these other puzzles, that I’ve been collecting like check this out this cheerios puzzle.

 

I have it it’s right here, that’s the puzzle, so I definitely want to do a deep dive into this company and this catalog and all of their interesting puzzles. But what I’m looking for is the yellow, wet paint puzzle you can see they actually made three of them. So I have red. I have blue the red one. I actually bought off of a viewer.

 

So if anyone has the yellow one um, I’m just putting out a call, please get in touch now. Videos like this are always a little bit of a gamble. I guess it’s a little risky because once people know what you’re looking for the price just goes up and up and up and up so I might be sacrificing my wallet a little bit in making this video. But I’m hoping that somebody out there in the world knows something about these puzzles that I’m about to tell you about some of them. I truly like do not know for sure if they ever existed or not.

 

This is like my own personal DaVinci Code okay, so before I show you what’s in here, I got to this puzzle in a little bit of a roundabout way and I’m going to put on my detective hat, because I had to do quite A bit of detective work: okay, so here’s what happened. Um in a previous video I talked about this company called gameophiles. They released this solid red puzzle and I was just asking if anyone knew anything about them side note. I also bought this other puzzle from game of files, which I think is fairly rare. It is a solid white puzzle called the design, your own jigsaw puzzle, and so it comes with a felt marker, enclosed to like draw your own picture on the puzzle after you solve it.

I just thought that was really funny. Um gamophiles actually released quite a few. Really fun puzzles so I definitely want to do a deep dive into that company as I keep collecting them, but anyway back to the story. So after I mentioned them in a video, a viewer named john got in touch and sent over a bunch of newspaper. Like articles and ads that he had found from one of those newspaper archive sites, so most of them are pretty standard, but there was this one ad: it’s from the Baltimore sun November, 11th, 1973.

 

So up here at the top, you can see the gamma files road map puzzles which aren’t super rare. But then, if we look down at the bottom, you can see these other puzzles by a company called Lawson and Lawson. Now the first one is the competitive puzzle from the blurb. It seems like it’s sort of a board game, slash puzzle where you’re trying to like solve it first competing against other people. However, I look up competitive puzzle, Lawson and nothing comes off.

 

I cannot find a single picture of the actual product, so I am appealing to anyone who was into puzzles in 1973. Do you remember this product? Did you have one? Can you send me a picture? I would love to see it, but competitive puzzle is not the most unique name to be able to google okay.

 

So then the other product that they have on here from Lawson and Lawson is the shapeless pattern jigsaw puzzle now. That, luckily, is a much more unique phrase that you can google, so I looked that up and what I found was actually a puzzle called pattern less shapes. There was one complete puzzle available on eBay and I may have spent a hundred dollars on it. Okay, let’s open it up, I’m so excited! Oh, I see it.

 

I see it. I see it. Oh, oh, my god! This is huge. I thought this was gonna, be like 12 by 12.

 

This is huge: oh wow, oh it’s so beautiful! Oh my gosh. Look at this illustration. Look at these beautiful puzzle, piece shapes and there it is Lawson and Lawson from Wilton Connecticut 1973, but we’re actually gonna get the most information off of the back. Let’s take a look: oh there, it is oh wow, oh wow, there’s the puzzle that I’m looking for there.

 

It is shapeless patterns. This is what I’m looking for. So you can see they actually released. Two different products, shapeless patterns and pattern less shapes it’s an entirely new concept in jigsaw puzzles. So for this one, the concept every piece fits every other piece, but only one combination of all the pieces will form the artwork shown.

 

You can, of course, create your own designs if you wish, so we have op art apart one there. It is and we have op art a part ii slightly different design, and then we have the pattern less shapes. When assembled correctly, the shapes of the pieces will form the artwork shown. There is no printed picture to guide you, and so that’s what this puzzle is. Okay, so I looked up shapeless patterns and couldn’t find any pictures of the actual puzzles.

 

But you know what I haven’t done is look up off art apart one, so I’m gonna try that now dash art apart one in quotes on google. Well, okay, no results found on all of google. Maybe if I put in two oh wait: oh this is something this is something uh, oh wait! No! No!

 

This is the springbok puzzle. Okay! Well, let me just go straight to worth point and try searching there. Oh  my gosh, it exists. Look at that, let’s take a look there.

 

It is that’s the picture. That’s okay! Wait! No! That’s it says two, but it looks like that’s actually the picture of what this one is calling one there.

 

It is okay, the exact same back and Lawson, okay. Well, I still can’t find any proof that they actually made this. Second one. Actually wait hang on okay. This is so weird.

 

Why is this one? Which one is this, so this actually isn’t either of these designs? Not exactly, I guess, it’s closest to yeah this top one, but it has green highlights instead of red, but there actually is another part to this story. So here on the front of this puzzle is actually signed chance. Brown, 73 So I googled it chance brown and it turns out he’s actually a cartoonist.

 

His family does the high end Lois and Hagar, the horrible cartoon strips and apparently in 1973. He also drew this design for the pattern less shapes puzzle. So, just as any detective would do, I tried to track him down to ask him about it. He doesn’t have a public direct email address, but I figured out a way and I got in touch with him and he actually replied back to me and gave me some really good information. He says that he got the assignment to do a puzzle with no image that could only be assembled by identifying the shapes of the pieces themselves.

 

He drew it over a weekend snowed into a cabin in Vermont with some recreational drugs. It’s the 70s. I guess he said he has 20 other similar designs somewhere um. He ended up. Doing album, cover art for a while and then also being a cartoonist um.

 

He loves jigsaw, puzzles, has a lot of them and I asked him if he could give me any more information about this Lawson and Lawson company, and he basically says I don’t know what became of the Lawson’s, but they were good to me and again he Has 20 more of these designs somewhere and yeah? That’s it so I feel really lucky that he got back to me and knew what I was talking about actually got some concrete information on this very, very rare puzzle. I would love to see his other designs and see those actually get made. So, unlike other puzzles, I don’t actually think I’m gonna take off the shrink wrap of this one just because it is so rare and I want to keep it pristine but there’s a little hole in the shrink wrap. So I think I might be able to just wiggle one piece out of there check out how thick that cardboard is.

 

This is like a super solid puzzle. Okay, can I get it back in? Can I get it back in there? We go okay, perfect. So back to the company, Lawson and Lawson, I tried looking them up.

 

Nothing really came up, except when I plugged it into eBay. I looked up Lawson Wilton because they were based here in Wilton, Connecticut and one puzzle showed up, which is this one, the crossword jigsaw game now. I feel really lucky that this just happened to be on eBay for like super cheap, because when I look up the crossword jigsaw game, Lawson literally, nothing comes up like this does not exist on the internet. It looks really interesting. I’M planning to do a whole video, where I do a deep dive into this puzzle because it’s like a mix of being a crossword puzzle and a jigsaw puzzle, but there’s like another twist to it.

 

So it seems like Lawson and Lawson were releasing interesting puzzles. But I just can’t find anything else about them. So if anyone is from Wilton Connecticut from 1973 and can clue me in on other things, they may have released or like who they were please get in touch all right. That was a very long story. These next two are going to be much faster.

 

So when I was trying to find out more information about that puzzle, I tried googling silver puzzle just in case it was like tagged incorrectly or something, and instead what I found is this silver optic puzzle from 1970 released by the American publishing company. This one doesn’t seem to have a huge mystery surrounding it. It’s just really rare, there’s one listing on worth point for the silver one and the gold one, although they don’t say what the name of the gold one is. So I’m not entirely sure what to google to find that one. But if we look on worth point, they just don’t show up very often, but I really want them for my collection because they would go so well with the two prize magic puzzles.

 

So, okay, I’m gonna keep an eye out for those this next one is very, very expensive. I think what I’m about to show. You are less for puzzle collectors and more for people who collect vintage apple products, because there is an apple 2 plus a personal computer jigsaw puzzle currently for sale on eBay for three thousand five hundred dollars. Like I’m sorry, I don’t care how rare a puzzle is. I am not spending three thousand five hundred dollars on one puzzle.

 

I mean to be fair. It does look very cool, very retro here on the eBay listing they even have the original catalog, so you can see how they advertised it back in 1983, and I would love to have this for my collection. It is exactly the type of retro style puzzle that I love, but at that price you know, I don’t think that’s gonna happen and moving on, I would like to talk about a little company called Eaton puzzles, so they were actually releasing puzzles right around the Same time as springbok in like the 70s, the 80s, you can see that the boxes look very similar. It’s this flat square box with the logo in black and white on the side. If you look at some of the designs of Eaton puzzles, they and springbok were releasing a very, very similar designs, and if we look at the pieces, it’s like the same type of super thick cardboard that springbok was also doing back.

 

Then I got this Haley’s comet puzzle just because I think it’s so retro again and just such a fun design all right. I just wanted to pop back in here to show you guys something because, after filming, all of that, I started putting together the Eaton puzzle, and I know I literally just made a video talking about how I don’t really care about missing pieces. But you can see that I did like the fun part of this puzzle. The text up there, the edge everything left, is basically another solid, colored puzzle, but because I’ve been over all of these pieces so many times. I am sure that I am missing.

 

At least three pieces I know I said I don’t really care about missing pieces, but come on there’s like not that much happening on this puzzle and that’s the piece that’s missing also up here on the text. I would have seen that piece already, and I would have seen this piece already, so these two are also both definitely missing. Also, looking through this box of pieces um, I was also sent this random other piece from some other puzzle that does not go to this puzzle, so I may have made a mistake: buying the cheapest version of this puzzle that was on eBay um. I guess follow along on Instagram. If you want to see me finish this and see how many pieces are missing in the end, but when I was looking into this company, I found this website called Eaton puzzles.

 

om, and basically somebody has cataloged almost every single puzzle that this company ever released. The site is not at all like fancy or flashy, but if you click on the title, you can see the picture of the puzzle. What else do you need? So, of course, I went through and clicked on, every single puzzle that is on that site and this company is so weird because they released so many incredibly boring drab landscapes, but then peppered throughout every. So often you just get like one or two really interesting puzzles, so there are three puzzles from them that I am particularly on.

 

The hunt for okay, first is the frustrator, which is this shiny, holographic design. This is the only instance that I saw of eaten using any sort of extra texture on top of their puzzles. I think it is really beautiful. I think it would fit right into my collection again. It would go so well with the prismagic puzzles and there actually was one on eBay fairly recently that I was bidding on, but I got outbid in literally like the last 30 seconds of the auction.

 

I was so mad. It was such an adrenaline rush. Okay, next is this puzzle called a puzzle plus I just really love any puzzle. That is a picture of puzzle pieces and I love how graphic and striking the picture is. But the problem is that it’s a little hard to search for, because springbok had their whole line of puzzles called the puzzles plus line.

 

But there are a couple on worth point, so I can get a good look at it. You know I guess they show up every so often, but just not since I have started looking for it, okay and then third, this one is the biggest mystery of all. If it wasn’t for this one photo, I’m about to show you. I would not believe that this puzzle actually existed, so it’s the only product on this Eaton website. That’s not a regular jigsaw puzzle.

 

It is called the challenge cup and the puzzle itself is a coffee bean design, but, as you can see, it was released in this fun little coffee cup. But anyway, if we zoom into the picture, we can read this entire scorecard and it is so funny. So if you complete the puzzle in under three minutes uh, we cannot see what that says. If you finish in three to five minutes, nice going doing piece work for a living five to eight minutes, maybe a little peace and quiet would have improved your score. Eight to ten minutes practice 10 to 15 minutes.

 

Were you trying to assemble the puzzle in its plastic bag and over 15 minutes no score. see bonus points for consolation? Okay, so then there are some penalties. Um. If you fill the cup before removing the puzzle, minus 20 points, if you attempt to drink the puzzle while assembling it minus 30 points and trying to fit the assembled puzzle back in the cup, we don’t know how many points you lose. It is so snarky.

 

I am obsessed with whoever wrote this but, as I said, this is the only photo of this product that I can find on the entire internet. It’s not on eBay. It’s not on worth point it’s not on google. So if anyone knows anything about this uh, please let me know, because I’d love to have one all right. Next up, I have a very scientific method of keeping all my puzzles on the floor right next to me, so this puzzle is one that I have shown on here before it is called a terrific maze, craze puzzle from the company labyrinthus labyrinth, labyrintus, okay, so I’m Watching this back – and I realized that I keep calling the brand of this puzzle the labyrinthus, but I actually think this whole thing.

 

This is the name of the puzzle and then the brand is this vama model kit. So hopefully that gives you a little more information. If anyone in Italy has seen this before so I got this puzzle from a viewer named Jan, who sent me a whole bunch of vintage puzzles a while back. The interesting thing about this puzzle is that it has these triangular pieces. It looks really hard.

 

I need to do this one here on the channel. I’ve just been so intimidated, but I just thought this puzzle was so interesting, so I wanted to try to find any other puzzles that this company had released so on worth point. There are exactly two other puzzles from this company. There was a blue one which looks fairly similar to this one yeah. The blue one also has the same triangular pieces, um they’re, both number one.

 

So I don’t know if it’s the same puzzle, but just a different color, and then it looks like a terrific maze. Crazed puzzle is also triangle pieces. This one has the number three on it, but it looks like these photos. The box is still sealed, so we can’t see any pictures of the actual puzzle. Oh, but it is an actual maze you can see here on the back after you solve it, you’re meant to solve the maze yeah that looks so fun.

 

I really want to do this puzzle, but those two listings on worth point is all that I can find about this company. It’s an Italian company, so I just thought: I’d put out a call to any of my Italian viewers. Do you know anything about this company or these puzzles, and can you help me get my hands on the other ones? So now, let’s change gears and talk about three Ravensburger puzzles.

 

So after my video about my collection of solid colored puzzles, I got a bunch of emails from people telling me about other solid colored puzzles that I didn’t know about, and apparently before there was this version of the crypt puzzles, which is you know very, very common. These are not at all rare, but apparently there was an earlier version of the crypt line released in Germany in I believe the 90s they’re called the think crypt puzzles. They have really funky packaging and it looks like there was a silver one: a blue one and a pink one, but the blue and the pink are much more pastel than like the current pink one. That’s being released, I’m not totally clear on how rare these are over in Germany, like I found this one site which looks like it’s local eBay in Germany and they have a whole bunch of them on there and they’re not expensive, so maybe they’re not at All rare over there – and I just did not know about them, but if I have any German viewers who want to help me get my hands on those three puzzles. Uh, please get in touch so a little more modern in 2020.

 

Ravensberger also released a brand new line of solid colored puzzles. This was limited edition, also over in Germany, and the colors are based on their transit system. I heard about these from a viewer named Helena who sent me this article. So thank you Helena, but it seems like it was a pretty limited release. It seems like they’re, really rare so again, if anyone is in Germany and wants to help me get my hands on some of these.

 

You know where to find me and then the third one. So these are not solid colored puzzles, but they are vintage puzzles from 1973 to 75. They released these beautiful pop art puzzles called the graphic series, so the pictures are from jigsawwiki.com um. The puzzles are double-sided and they’re just called graphic 1 graphic, 2, graphic, 3, etc.

 

I just think the designs are so cool, so retro, but they’re really hard to google, because graphic is not a very unique name for a jigsaw puzzle, but I have a dream of someday owning all five of these puzzles. That would truly be like the shining jewel of my puzzle: collection, and then. Finally, I just want to talk about one more springbok puzzle so similar to a little boy blue coming home. They also released another promotional puzzle uh. This one came out in 1966 and it was made for the Celanese chemical company.

 

Obviously, since it was a promotional puzzle way, fewer of them were made than the ones that they made to sell, but there are two of them archived on worth point so this time, unlike little boy blue, we can actually get a pretty good look at it, but The design is so pretty I mean, let alone how rare it is. I would just love to do it as a jigsaw puzzle. So in my video about the other ultra-rare little boy, blue puzzle, I mentioned a mysterious collector, who definitely has one – and I have heard through the puzzle, grapevine – that this person might also have a copy of puzzlement. But unfortunately, this person asked me to keep their identity private, so I really can’t say any more than that, but besides that one person, I don’t know how many were made. I don’t know anyone else who has one, but you know maybe someday a girl.

 

Can dream of rare jigsaw puzzles, so I’ve been talking a lot about rare puzzles, but do you know what’s not rare websites made on squarespace. Squarespace is an online platform where you can really easily design your own site. Even if you don’t know how to code, which I definitely do not so I’ve been thinking about what I want karenpuzzles.com to be, and I think that in part of it, I want to have a gallery where I can share high quality photos of all of my Vintage puzzles almost like a virtual museum because, besides like old eBay listings, this information just is not out there. So I love how squarespace makes this so easy to set up like literally just a couple clicks and I’ve got a gallery. You can also link your social media profiles and there are blogging tools integrated, so you can have comments replies likes in order to build a community, so I’m going to keep building that out.

 

It’s going to be a big project, but in the meantime, if you want to try it out for yourself, you can head over to squarespace.com for a free trial and when you’re ready to launch your site, you can head over to squarespace.com Karen puzzles for 10 off your First, purchase of a website or domain all right, so just as a summary um. These are all of the puzzles that I’m in the market, for if you have any of them, that you want to gift me or sell me or if you just have any additional information about them. Please feel free to get in touch and, if you know about any other, rare or interesting puzzles feel free to send me an email and tell me about them.

 

This is truly a crowd-sourced jigsaw, puzzle collection that I’m building here so leave. A comment. Tell me out of all of the puzzles that I showed, which one would you most like to do like just as a jigsaw puzzle. Your code word for the comments will be mysterious. Don’t forget to subscribe to stay up to date on if I ever acquire any of these puzzles – and I think that’s it for today, so I will see you all in the next one.