About a year ago I published a blog post about a Chinese crooked mahjong set. Those mahjong tiles were marked and came with a set of contact lenses. Here is similar set of domino tiles, but the dominoes are not marked, not exactly. This gaffed domino set is now available through the CARDSHARK Online Sporting Emporium.
The tiles are made from a special material that becomes see-through with certain cameras. So, the tiles are made from two layers. The top layer is the face of the tile and is made from regular white acrylic. The spots are drilled through and filled with black plugs. So, the spots go completely through the top layer. The gaffed part of the tiles is actually the back layer, which is a solid black piece of acrylic. But that black acrylic is a special camera filter material that becomes 100% see through with certain video cameras. The next image is a still capture from a video recording that was made with two cameras. The image on the left was produced by a regular camera, and shows how we see the back of the tiles, and the image on the right was produced by the gaffed camera.
The beauty of this gaff is that, unlike the gaffed mahjong set, the tiles are not actually marked. If the back layer was made from a regular piece of black acrylic, the tiles would not be gaffed at all. So, for argument's sake, if the gaff were ever discovered it might be hard to prove that the dominoes were deliberately gaffed, as no one can exclude the possibility that the maker had no idea the black acrylic would show up clear under certain cameras.
Following is a short video demo from which the still image was captured.
http://www.blogger.com/video-play.mp4?contentId=39df63ec7ca38838&type=video%2Fmp4
This gaffed domino set should be of interest to collectors, because there are only six sets in the world. Two of them are in private collections and the remaining four sets are for sale. This is truly a limited edition and as far as I know, a one of a kind gaff.
0 comments:
Post a Comment