The names for the exclusive sets that are distributed in the little brown envelopes together with the Chessex PoDs get voted on in a Speckled Collectors group on Facebook every time they release new sets. Below are the names for the current run that are now in circulation.
Continue readingNov 01 2023
Dice History – The Danish Edition
I recently came across a dice set on a second hand platform that caught my eye, because it looked like the Chessex Opaque urea dice out of the Danish Dan-Tern factory, but it curiously had a bottom-read d4 in a mould I had never seen before. My curiosity piqued, I went ahead and purchased said set.
Continue readingFeb 25 2023
Reference Guide: Ancient & Gold Mist
I recently wrote a post on why the Ancient vs. Gold Mist names that collectors differentiate are actually a myth, but nonetheless is it useful to have this distinction in the dice collecting community. In a nutshell, collectors now differentiate between the somewhat darker and swirlier Ancient variant and the lighter and more misty Gold Mist variant of these dice.
Continue readingFeb 25 2023
The Idiosyncrasies of Dice Naming
If you’ve been in the dice collecting community for a while, you might know that collectors sometimes give things names in order to tell certain dice apart that may look very similar or just to have a name for something specific that wasn’t quite disguished in that way by the company who made the dice.
Continue readingJun 22 2021
Vox Machina – The Polyset Edition
Like some people before me, I embarked on a quest to make my Critical Role Vox Machina d20s into full sets, trying to find existing polysets that matched the designs of the d20s. And let me tell you, it’s not been very easy.
Continue readingJun 16 2021
Dice IDing and where to start
The Basics
This blog post is mostly aimed at people who are newer to dice collecting and are looking for more basic information. Call it a starter guide. 🙂
Continue readingFeb 14 2021
European Discoveries in Deinking
As some of you may know, the deinking method of choice in the US is using the degreasing cleaning agent LA Awesome and just soaking the dice in it undiluted for a few days. However, us folks in other countries don’t have easy access to LA Awesome, so some people have tried and tested other locally available products.
As a German, I’ve struggled with finding something will work as well as LA Awesome, and I have finally made a breakthrough that I would like to share.
Continue readingJan 24 2021
Dice ID Guide: Swirly Orange Dice
In this blog entry, I’d like to point the spotlight at orange dice with swirls, particularly the Chessex Vortex Orange and Vortex Magma lines, as well as Crystal Case Silk Orange, which all look very similar.
Continue readingDec 06 2020
Not all that glitters is Borealis…
Updated 08 Oct 2023
The Original Chessex Borealis
Some of the most sought-after dice in the collecting world are the old Chessex Borealis lines like Aquerple, Clear and Confetti that are made out of a clear acrylic base with colour shifting glitter inside.
Sadly, these three particular lines are no longer made because the EU started using the iridescent glitter material in Euro banknotes and it became a controlled substance. Borealis Clear was discontinued in 2014, Aquerple in 2015 and Confetti likely around the same time, though these are even rarer as they didn’t sell well at the time and never went into full production after an initial limited release.
Continue readingNov 21 2020
Scammer Dice Shops
Updated 22 Jan 2024
Since late 2020 we’ve seen a significant amount of scammer shops pop up on Facebook and other social media. These accounts and stores advertise dice that aren’t theirs, and will not deliver what they promise.
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