I am proud to present ...

Overall Mellis played in seven world championships and three european championships. Five times he won the national championship.

This blade from 1968/1969 is as rare as the Stiga Neidert and in absolutely perfect condition. 

I like it very much. 

And here you can see original pictures of an old Stiga Hans Alsér from such an early series,

which I sold a few months ago. Actually I don`t have any more blades of this series.

 

The heads of these blades were more square and some of them had very flat handles.

This Stiga Bernahrdt has a wonderful limba outer veneer and is one of prettiest blades in my collection.

After his career as player he started a new career as trainer and as first job he trained the german national-team (from 1971 - 1974), before he went back to sweden as trainer of the swedisch national-team. Much too early (in the age of 35) he died in an airplane-crash (1977).

For a very long time (60`s up to the beginning of the 90`s) all flared Stiga blades had the name of Hans Alsér. Therfore more Alser blades are sold than any other blade worldwide.

From time to time Stiga changed the picture on the sticker. So you will find several different stickers of Alsér, where you can see him, getting a bit older - with less hair on the younger blades 

This blade is from one of the first (or maybe the first) versions of the "modern" blades with the new roundish head shape. As I wrote, Alsér won the double world championship in 1967. After this success Stiga printed a new sticker with the "World Champion" imprint. So I can say, that my Alsér blade is from 1967 - 1968 (for a short time both versions were sold parallel) and this version is the only one, where Alsér is wearing a T-Shirt instead of a team-jersey. Therefore this rare version is called "T-Shirt-Alsér".

These blades from the end of the 60`s up to the middle of the 70`s had a sticker with the picture of a player on the handle. Below this picture there was a big black letter, mostly the first letter of the first or second name of the player.

Ladies first: Let`s start with the only female-player in my collection

In the 60`s up to the beginning of the 70`s Stiga was the leading company and produced much more tabletennis-blades than any other company, although they had only one single blade-composition (limba-limba-ayous-limba-limba), today still a classical Allround Wood composition. But the thickness varied a lot (from 4,8 mm up to 6,0 mm). Therefore you can find All-, but also Off blades from this time. 

In the beginning Stiga produced three different kinds of handles (FL, ST and CO, with some variations) and every kind of handle got the name of a famous player with Stiga-contract. 

All blades were manufactured very carefully with special material and special producing-methods. For example Stiga used old veneers, which had a long time to dry very slowly. They used a natural glue (hide-glue, bone-glue), the handle-parts were glued with very low pressure and nailed with two (some blades with three) nails.

This was the best time for Stiga and nearly all champions were playing with Stiga blades. Since 1974 the blades were still good, but they had not the same quality like the older peaces. I don`t know why, but most Stiga-experts will agree to this view. 

The 60`s Stiga blades had a funny shape, more square than today and with really big head sizes, not really playable today. So I decided to start my collection with the first "modern" blades, beginning at the end of the 60`s.