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As the inventor of the Icehouse set, I have a variety of old Icehouse stuff lying around the house...
- Original Icehouse set 99/100
- The Root Beer Stash
- The Watermelon Stash
- Original Icehouse Piece Mold
- Original plastic pyramids, by the stash:
- 3 Player Xyloid Icehouse set
Original
Limited Edition Icehouse set, #99 of the first 100
In the fall and early winter of 1989, four friends got together to create a run of 100 Icehouse game sets. They came in simple black boxes with beautiful, solid, crystal-like pyramids and a trio of booklets, entitled Rules, Mystique, and History. The pyramids were hand-made by the friends, taking turns in shifts to mix liquid plastic in big beakers and pour it swiftly (before it hardens!) into 145 molds arranged like huge ice cube trays on tables in Andy's (and later, Kristin's) apartment. Included also are 4 black cardstock stash pads, several Icehouse Games business cards, and a rather remarkable cover sheet from the friends, asking for word-of-mouth help in promoting their new game. This set even includes one of the famous "tip-saver" trays which Number 12 engineered after we discovered how badly the tips of pyramids could be damaged by bouncing around inside those plain black boxes.
We sold most of those original sets very quickly, but I keep a few of those first 100 sets aside for myself, including this one. (It's #99, leaving me with #3, #10, #17, and #45.) The pieces are in great shape! They have a few "stick marks" because besides being fragile, these early pieces also have a tendency to stick to each other (and to the tip-saver), but other than that, they're in nearly perfect shape. And I'll be sure to provide extra-special packaging on this, to make sure it arrives in the same pristine condition it's in now.
- This item sold on 3/21/4 for $162.50
Rubber
Icehouse Piece Mold, relic of early production
This is one of the original rubber molds which were used to make the pyramids for the first 100 Icehouse sets, published by Icehouse Games (corporate forerunner to Looney Labs) back in 1989. The original pyramids were made of castable plastic resin which was poured, in liquid form, into these flexible "ice-cube-tray" style molds. After the plastic hardened, the pieces were popped out of these molds and sent on to quality control. The liquid plastic we were working with was very stinky, and my landlord got pretty annoyed with us, since we'd set up our "factory" in my apartment and he lived upstairs... anyway, at its peak, the original Icehouse piece factory was able to produce 144 pyramids at a time: 48 of each size. Some of the molds, which were created for us by Number 12, were "family" molds, like this one, producing one of each size; others were strips that made 5 at a time of one size. In other words, there's a bunch of other molds like this in our attic...
- #1 sold on 10/12/4 for $10.50
- #2 sold on 9/27/5 for $30.00
Icehouse Pieces,
Watermelon colored, 15 pyramids
This One-Of-A-Kind (so far) stash of 15 Icehouse Pieces is known as the "Watermelon" stash due to its unique fruit-candy-colored tint. It's similar to the famous "Root Beer" stash, which launched my ebay Project and which was first described in the Wunderland.com webzine on November 29, 2001.
Here's how it was created: When the folks at KLON Corporation are manufacturing the pieces, and they switch from one color to another, they necessarily make a few sets of pieces in strange, transitional tints, as the new color pushes the old color through the system. Usually, they're just ugly and non-uniform, but right in the middle you get a few that perfectly combine the two colors. In this case, red and clear came together as this delightful pinkish color. But there were only enough pieces of this color to make one stash, and even at that, they aren't all exactly the same shade.
The Watermelon stash comes packed in a standard Icehouse Pieces tube.
- This item sold on 9/29/4 for $51.00
Icehouse Pieces, Root
Beer colored, 15 pyramids
This One-Of-A-Kind stash of 15 Icehouse Pieces is known as the "Root Beer" stash due to its unique cola-colored tint. As described in the Wunderland.com webzine on November 29, 2001, this special stash of Icehouse pieces was created when the injection-mold operator at KLON saw these in the trash and thought they'd make a nice set.
Here's how it happened: When they're manufacturing the pieces and they switch from one color to another, they necessarily make a few sets of pieces in strange, transitional tints, as the new color pushes the old color through the system. Usually, they're just ugly and non-uniform, but right in the middle you get a few that perfectly combine the two colors. In this case, purple and orange came together as this delightful root-beer color. But there were only enough pieces of this color to make one stash, and even at that, they aren't all exactly the same shade.
The Root Beer stash comes packed in a standard Icehouse Pieces tube.
- The Root Beer stash sold for $100.00! (This was my first eBay auction.)
Original
Icehouse pieces, translucent plastic: Blue
This is a single stash (15 pyramids) of solid plastic Icehouse pieces. These pieces were made during the original run of the first 100 Icehouse sets made in 1989. This stash was assembled from leftover pyramids which were considered rejects during the original production run and which have been languishing in the "reject box" in our attic ever since then.
These pieces are totally non-uniform and have a number of flaws; please read the description of how this set (and others) were assembled in the Wunderland Webzine of August 5, 2004.
I am selling a total of 4 sets like this. (There are also 6 more sets, wth Drill Damage, which I'll be selling later.)
- #1 sold on 8/11/4 for $20.50
- #2 sold on 10/12/4 for $21.50
- #3 sold on 1/11/5 for $31.00
- #4 sold on 8/31/5 for $13.00
Original
Icehouse pieces, translucent plastic: Green
This is a single stash (15 pyramids) of solid plastic Icehouse pieces. These pieces were made during the original run of the first 100 Icehouse sets made in 1989. This stash was assembled from leftover pyramids which were considered rejects during the original production run and which have been languishing in the "reject box" in our attic ever since then.
These pieces are totally non-uniform and have a number of flaws; please read the description of how this set (and others) were assembled in the Wunderland Webzine of August 5, 2004.
I am selling a total of 2 sets like this. (There are also 5 more sets, wth Drill Damage, which I'll be selling later.)
- #1 sold on 8/11/4 for $31.00
- #2 sold on 8/31/5 for $21.00
Original
Icehouse pieces, translucent plastic: Red
This is a single stash (15 pyramids) of solid plastic Icehouse pieces. These pieces were made during the original run of the first 100 Icehouse sets made in 1989. This stash was assembled from leftover pyramids which were considered rejects during the original production run and which have been languishing in the "reject box" in our attic ever since then.
These pieces are totally non-uniform and have a number of flaws; please read the description of how this set (and others) were assembled in the Wunderland Webzine of August 5, 2004.
Note that the larges in this stash have had a small hole drilled through the tip.
I am selling a total of 5 sets like this.
- #1 sold on 8/11/4 for $28.00
- #2 sold on 10/12/4 for $21.00
- #3 sold on 8/31/5 for $21.00
- #4 sold on 6/6/8 for $25.02
Original Icehouse pieces,
translucent plastic: Yellow
This is a single stash (15 pyramids) of solid plastic Icehouse pieces. These pieces were made during the original run of the first 100 Icehouse sets made in 1989. This stash was assembled from leftover pyramids which were considered rejects during the original production run and which have been languishing in the "reject box" in our attic ever since then.
These pieces are totally non-uniform and have a number of flaws; please read the description of how this set (and others) were assembled in the Wunderland Webzine of August 5, 2004.
Note that the larges in this stash have had a small hole drilled through the tip.
I am selling a total of 2 sets like this.
- #1 sold on 8/11/4 for $29.25
- #2 sold on 8/31/5 for $21.00
Extremely Rare Silver
Glitter Icehouse Pyramids
Icehouse collectors, take note! Here's a stash of 15 pyramids made using the original molding system created by Number 12, sometime around 1990. After the original production of 100 test copies, we made a very small number of specialty stashes, featuring various unusual colors. In a very few cases we stirred glitter into the liquid goo that hardened into these pyramids. This stash of pyramids contains 15 pyramids (5 each of 3 sizes) from this extremely limited run. But while very historic and unique, these pieces do have flaws; this stash was assembled from leftover pyramids which were considered rejects during the original production run and which languished in the "reject box" in our attic for many years. (For more detials, please read the description of how this set and others were assembled in the Wunderland Webzine of August 5, 2004.) These pieces are totally non-uniform and have a number of imperfections, but they also look REALLY COOL! Buy this set to compete with at the 19th International Icehouse Tournament, and you can save the shipping cost - I can deliver it to you personally at Origins!
- This item sold June 21, 2008 for $72.55
3-player Xyloid
Icehouse set: 45 wooden pyramids
This is a 3-color Icehouse set featuring wooden pyramids in red, yellow, and green. The pieces in this set are rare leftovers from the Xyloid Icehouse edition published in 1992. Included is a black cloth drawstring bag, also a leftover from the original production of Xyloid Icehouse sets.
These pieces were not used originally because at the time all we were selling were complete 4 player sets, and there weren't enough blue pieces to accompany the other 3 colors.
Please read the description of how this set (and others) were assembled in the Wunderland Webzine of August 5, 2004.
I sold 5 sets like this. They're all gone.
- #1 sold on 8/11/4 for $67
- #2 sold on 8/17/4 for $61
- #3 sold on 10/19/4 for $32
- #4 sold on 4/13/5 for $52
- #5 sold on 11/1/5 for $32
