Please define "porcelain" to differentiate your sought-after stones' material from "ceramic."

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David Bogie, Boise ID
I play go, I ride a recumbent, of course I use Macintosh.

I've seen these sold as "porcelain" online - even though in reality they may have been made of another ceramic material, not necessarily actual porcelain. I once bought a set of these about 5 years ago - when Go equipment was much easier to come by - then sold them off about a year later. I would like to purchase a ceramic go stone set once again, but I do not seem to know just where there is a set available. In my city it is not easy to come by Go equipment. Some Korean stores in the area sell foldable boards and glass stones, but no ceramic.

Then again, perhaps I should consider the resin plastic stones being sold on YMImports.com . They look like they will suit well a travel set.

That's exactly what I was going to suggest. YM Imports has two sets that may work for you, one is double-convex and the other is single.

Double:
http://www.ymimports.com/p-2397-hi-tech ... pJclZF_hs4

Single:
http://www.ymimports.com/p-2396-melamin ... pJc5JF_hs4

Both are also inexpensive.

Searching the inter webs for porcelain go stones and for ceramic go stones (substitute baduk or weixi or weichi opt weiqi) and you will come up with a few out of date sites that once offered alternatives to glass or plastic but I think yunzi stones are about the closest thing to porcelain you will find these days. Sintered materials like jade and quartz powders are not porcelains at all but they are a bit different from ceramics.

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David Bogie, Boise ID
I play go, I ride a recumbent, of course I use Macintosh.

If it helps, it is very easy to buy porcelain stones in China. They are also very cheap, like maybe around 2-5$ a set. I have never found any on the internet though.

As a side note, porcelain stones are pretty fragile, I've broken a few (2 or 3) just by playing with them. But as a group, when I was doing the China trip, we probably broke (we had about 20 people) about 3 or 4 sets worth of stones.

I have a set of the plastic stones from YMI; they won't break, but they are rather light.

Yunzi are nicer than the porcelain ones for sure and don't break as easily. In China, they were about 10$ a set.

Anyway, good luck and I hope this helped.

Biodegradable?

So many questions

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Confucius in the Analects says "even playing go is better than eating chips in front of tv all day." -- kivi

Biodegradable is referring to the type of plastic. I had assumed for a long time that it is "PLA" (i.e. corn plastic or other "starch plastic"), but wikipedia informs me there are a multitude of "biodegradable" plastics. Melamine (which now describes the single convex stones) is also biodegradable. Both the single and double convex stones used to be described in the same terms ("biodegradable" and "indestructible"). I don't know if the change in description reflects a change in supplier, product, both, or neither. YMI had for a long time sold melamine single convex stones in wood bowls, which was an awesome deal, at the same time they sold "biodegradable" single convex plastic stones. I never determined whether they were in fact the same stones.

Mysteries of the universe, and all...

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