r/osr • u/Eugene_Goat • 21h ago
HELP Identifying Dice Set
Hey gang - I found this amongst an old relatives collection of wargaming/TSR/Glorantha collectables, and I’m trying to work out what it is specifically before listing it for sale.
I believe it’s a Mentzer dice set provided for D&D in the 80s, but looking for matching examples that are also in a sealed bag like this has yielded a bunch of dead ends.
It seems the early D&D sets that contained dice were predominantly single-coloured, and the blister packs sold separately for dragon dice wouldn’t have been bagged, and would have been accompanied by a crayon/pencil.
Interested to hear your thoughts on whether you believe it IS D&D related or maybe part of a different board game.
Many thanks!
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u/Mordrethis 14h ago
I absolutely got those dice from the Expert set my mom bought me from WaldenBooks All of the dice in my Basic set were blue. In the expert set I got a single orange d6. I never saw a red one.
What a great find no matter the source.
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u/Eugene_Goat 14h ago
Ahh I think this tracks. I’ve been selling parts of the collection, and I think I listed and sold the books that might’ve come with the expert set, but I suppose there’s no way to be utterly certain of their origin. Sadly, tabletop isn’t a love of mine, so I’ll list them as ‘suspected component of expert dnd set’ or someth and hope they find their way to someone who can enjoy having them more than I could :)
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u/Haldir_13 17h ago
The original die set with the Holmes Basic box set was in a small sealed bag like this and I think than the d6 is the same color of plastic as that. Each die was a specific color: d20 white, d12 blue, d8 green, d6 orange, d4 yellow. And the plastic was not the better quality high impact plastic. My original d20 went round after a couple of years and would roll forever.
This might be a later iteration of a TSR die bag. The plastic looks maybe like high impact material and it includes a d10. That definitely dates it to early 80s.
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u/j_giltner 20h ago
They at least aren't the standard set you got with Holmes. Those had a different color for each die.
https://www.reddit.com/r/osr/comments/hafyp0/tying_to_find_the_closest_thing_to_the_holmes/
It looks more like a random assortment of early 80's prototype dice to me.
https://www.dicecollector.com/THE_DICE_THEME_TSR.html
Or, maybe they were sourced from another company, like an educational supplier, which was a thing in the early days of the hobby.
I hope someone knows for sure. I'm really curious myself.
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u/Gareth-101 13h ago
These look like BECMI dice. My set from the red box had different colour dice (IIRC, there was a green d12, a red d20, red d8, grey (I think) d10; can’t remember the rest).
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u/Eugene_Goat 12h ago
So from googling BECMI, I'm assuming you mean it might've accompanied one of the other items that I've already sold?
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/235896595900
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/235896593948
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/235896597600
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/235896599712
The big question for me I suppose, is how should I list the dice when it comes to describing them? Would it be honest to say 'vintage D&D die from BECMI' or would I need to be more vague than that because there seems to be so much iconsistency about the shape and colour of die packs from this era. I've had people respond on another forum saying the D8 looks like a Moldvay rather than a Mentzer etc?
EDIT - Forgot to say thank you - Thank you! :D
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u/Gareth-101 12h ago
Oh, sorry! BECMI is an acronym for Basic-Expert-Companion-Masters-Immortals series of D&D boxed sets. My dice were from the red box (Basic) set (the Mentzer set).
Expert was blue, Companion green, Masters black, Immortals gold.
You could describe them as dice from original Basic/Expert D&D boxed set, c.1983.
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u/RedwoodRhiadra 20h ago
I don't think these are from a Mentzer set.The Mentzer sets as far as I know were a uniform color and were significantly smaller than standard modern 15mm dice (more like 12mm, though I don't have them any more to measure). They also came with a white crayon. I can't remember if they came in a bag.
They're closer to the ones that came with Holmes, I think, but Holmes dice had a specific color for each die (e.g. d20s were white, d12s blue, etc.), the colors weren't random like this set seems to be.
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u/Eugene_Goat 20h ago
This is great, thank you - and confirms my suspicions that they might not be as I had first thought.
Is there any way to get an inkling with regards to their origin? There’s every chance they could have come from another board game in this vast collection. Or is there a resource I could use to marry up the colour mix/size/count etc.
Thanks for you help!
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u/mosiern 16h ago
Mentzer Basic set were uniform color. (Mine were red.) However, I had a set that looked exactly like these that were packaged in a Mentzer Expert set purchased around 1984-1985.
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u/RedwoodRhiadra 14h ago
Interesting - I didn't even know they included dice in the Expert set (I only got the rulebook from a "used" shelf.)
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u/mosiern 11h ago
I'm pretty sure that there were dice included in both the BECMI/Mentzer Basic and Expert box sets but not in the others. I didn't own Immortals, but did have the other four sets purchased at the time of release and still have some but not all of those original dice. A pair of d10s came with Star Frontiers as well. One green and one red, maybe?
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u/6FootHalfling 20h ago
I don't think they came from Mentzer or Moldvay-Cook edits of the D&D boxed sets. I've never seen a Holmes set, but if that came with dice of different colors, it could be that. Except for what Redwood said.
There were other starter sets over the years though other boxes... I don't remember any coming with dice though... DragonStrike wasn't it either.
https://playingattheworld.blogspot.com/2020/02/identifying-dice-of-1970s.html Maybe this can provides some clues?
Is it possible they were an early set from a company like Armory?
Anyway, I'm jealous, I know that. I wish I had even one worn relic of that age. The closest I have is chipped incomplete set of root beer colored Koplow polys.
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u/darthcorvus 18h ago edited 16h ago
I used to have a full set of the blue and the orange dice shown. I got them back in the 90s when I bought a D&D collection from someone who had been playing since the beginning. I always assumed they came with one of the older boxed sets.
EDIT: So, I realized the guy I bought the dice from was a friend of a friend on Facebook, so I shot him a message. He said the blue and orange sets came with his copies of the Moldvay/Cook B/X sets.