This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 2/1/2025
The Mysterious Planchette, or Talking Board. Gloucester: Glevum Games, ca. 1900s–1930s. Dark wooden planchette with metal castors and “bubble" top pencil holder, with the “Psysio-Psychophone" talking board (litho on paper) in original red pictorial box. Instructions pasted to inside of lid. The highest quality variant of three types manufactured. Box 7 x 8 x 2". Wear and staining to the box. Planchette and physio-psychophone in very good condition.“Perhaps the most recognizable writing planchette produced in Great Britain, the Mysterious Planchette was first produced by famed toymakers Robert Brothers under their Glevum Games imprint around 1902. The following year, the Great Cavendish Planchette Trial erupted when wealthy playboy Henry Cavendish sued to recover his massive inheritance from a pair of unscrupulous spirit mediums who used a writing planchette convince him to sign away his fortune by posing as the spirit of Cavendish's deceased mother. The trial dominated newspapers in both Great Britain and beyond and caused an international surge in the popularity of writing planchettes that manufacturers rushed to supply. Robert Brothers, established in 1894 in Gloucester, England by brothers Harry Owen and John Owen Roberts, was by that time already a prolific producer of a wide range of furniture, toys, and games, and with an attractive product already on the market and a new factory at their disposal, were able to help meet the massive demand, to the company's enormous success. The company produced their flagship Mysterious Planchette for approximately three decades, and their innovation of the Physio-Psychophone fold-out answer sheet became a frequently-imitated accessory among rival planchette manufacturers for years to come." – Brandon Hodge, The Mysterious Planchette