A Beginner’s Guide to Antique Shopping in the Coachella Valley
The Coachella Valley is known for its great secondhand stores, but if you have no idea where to start, let us help you.
For those of us here in the desert, winter seems like an abstract concept right about now. We’re still sweating, and our air conditioning units continue to huff and puff. True, the days are getting shorter, and football season is underway; both are good signs of an impending cool down. The dog days are behind us but it still feels a lot like summer.
Our evenings in the upcoming months are different too. No more twilight walks with the dog and other outdoor adventures after work. We have dinner and hunker down, too often with computers or iThings. But there was a time when board games kept us entertained at night, and now they seem to be coming back. Let’s look into this.
Since long boring nights have been around way longer than computers, board games outdate computers by, oh, about 5,000 years. Not surprisingly, that Cradle of Civilization between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers that you learned about in junior high and haven’t thought about since was the birthplace of board games. Crude dice made from sticks, stones, bones and other materials were the initial elements, and it wasn’t long before ancient dice started to look like those of today. A game called Senet was the entertainment of choice among the pharaohs, and while the rules of the game have been lost to history a surprising number of game pieces have survived the centuries.
As humanity evolved, so did board games. One game about which we know a bit more was called Mehen. That one featured a board with a serpent at its center, and play involved marbles, dice and lions. Small inanimate lions, anyway. Each player endeavored to move their marbles towards the center and then back out again, with the serpent waiting to eat those that lagged. Here again, the exact rules remain murky, but at least one other game has survived intact for more than 2,000 and is still played today: the Royal Game of Ur. Its rules were discovered carved into an ancient stone tablet and to this day has adherents in India and elsewhere. Modern-day backgammon is a descendant of this long-ago pastime.
From those days to now, the number of board games available has exploded to exponential proportions. Games like Monopoly and Yahtzee have been played by millions, and new games are being developed all the time. The crowdfunding platform Kickstarter has been a huge driver of new games, allowing amateur creators to obtain funding so that they might bring their own games to market. Originally designed as a funding mechanism for media projects, it has become a capital resource for all types of artistic endeavors and to date has helped launch more than 200,000 projects. If there will ever be an era that becomes known as the Golden Age of Game Development, it is right now.
Notwithstanding the above, there has also been a resurgence in enthusiasm for the board games of yore. We played them as kids, and they are often just as engaging now. Even better, they allow us to extract our kids and grandkids from staring endlessly at computer screens, an affliction that should concern us all for its future impact on critical thinking and socialization. While some vintage board games can be spendy, most are available at very modest prices at game stores and galleries like ours. The selection is nearly endless, and so are the opportunities for engagement. With winter evenings getting closer, it might be time to look for some non-digital distractions. It’s good for everyone.
Mike Rivkin and his wife, Linda, are long-time residents of Rancho Mirage. For many years, he was an award-winning catalogue publisher and has authored seven books, along with countless articles. Now, he’s the owner of Antique Galleries of Palm Springs. His antiques column appears Sundays in The Desert Sun. Want to send Mike a question about antiques? Drop him a line at [email protected].
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