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American tiles in 4 colours, green, pink, blue and ivory white, cut for the western game and sold as a full playing set.
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Flat $9.95 shipping · 30-day returns from delivery
American mahjong, western mahjong and Jewish mahjong all describe the same thing: the 166 tile game with jokers, played from a card published annually by the National Mah Jongg League. The third name is historical rather than religious. The game arrived in the United States in the 1920s and took root particularly firmly in Jewish American communities, where weekly games have run in the same families for three generations.
Anyone using any of those three names is looking for the same equipment.
Ivory white is the traditional reading and the one that matches every teaching book and app. It is also the hardest to read on a pale cloth under a warm bulb, which is the condition most evening games happen in.
The three coloured options solve that at the cost of looking less classical. If the set is for a table where someone is learning, take ivory. If it is for players who know the faces, colour is easier on the eye and easier to tell apart from a neighbour's set.
Tiles bought separately have to match the racks already on the table. Racks are cut for a tile height and are unforgiving about it. Measure an existing tile before ordering.
Whatever the colour, an American set has to carry the 3 suits, the winds and dragons, the flowers and the jokers. The jokers are the part that separates this game from the Chinese one, and a set without them cannot play a National Mah Jongg League card no matter how it is labelled.
If you are replacing tiles rather than buying a first set, count what you already have before ordering. A set that has quietly lost 4 tiles over 10 years needs a full replacement, not a colour change.
Damp cloth, no solvents. Keep them out of prolonged heat, which yellows resin tiles regardless of colour. Store them contained so they do not grind against each other.
| Material | Plastic |
|---|---|
| Colours | Green, pink, blue, ivory white |
| Shape | Rectangular |
| Weight | 2 kg (4.4 lb) |
| Age | 14 and over |
Orders are processed within 1 to 2 business days, with tracking on every parcel. Delivery across the United States takes 10 to 25 days and costs $9.95, one flat rate charged once per order whatever the number of items.
Changed your mind? You have 30 days from delivery to request a return, unused and in its original packaging. Approved refunds go back to your original payment method within 3 business days.
Read at a glance
Nobody wants to squint at their own hand. Faces that carry across the table, so the game moves and nobody has to ask.
Weight you'll notice
The difference between a tile you tolerate and a tile you reach for is in your fingers. Heavier tiles shuffle better and stack straighter.
Match your mat
Tiles set the palette for everything else on the table. Pick the ones you want to build around.
Realistically, you replace the set rather than the tile, unless yours came with blanks. Manufacturers do not keep single tiles in stock and colour drifts between production runs, so a bought replacement rarely matches. The workable answers are a set that shipped with spares, or buying a full second set in the same colourway to cannibalise, which is why colour choice matters at purchase.
Antique bone and bamboo sets sit at the top, followed by carved stone, and both are collected rather than played. Below them, price tracks size and material: larger tiles in denser material cost more to make and considerably more to ship. Plastic sets like this one are at the practical end, where the money goes into the count being complete rather than into the material being rare.
Availability at general retailers comes and goes, and what they carry tends to be whichever set the buyer could source that season. The useful habit is to ignore the shop and interrogate the set: is it cut for the American game, does it include the honours and jokers a card needs, and will the tile sit properly in the racks you already own.
Not a variant of the game, despite how often it is searched as one. It refers to sets made in pink rather than ivory, which became popular as mahjong moved out of the traditional palette and onto tables where the set is left out between games. The rules are untouched. Pink is one of the 4 colours here, alongside green, blue and ivory white.
A mahjong set is handled more than almost anything else in the house: every tile passes through four pairs of hands, several times a game.
That is what we select for. Tiles that read clearly from the far side of the table, edges that stay clean, and a case that still closes after a few seasons of being carried around.
Sets differ in ways that only show at the table: the weight of a tile in the hand, how a crak reads from three seats away, whether the case survives the trip to a friend’s house.
When we have the figures, we publish them: tile count, tile size, weight and material. When we do not have one, we leave it out rather than guess.
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