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A boxed 144 tile set in white dense amine at 20 mm, traditional faces at travel size and well under a kilo complete.
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Flat $9.95 shipping · 30-day returns from delivery
White tiles with the standard Chinese characters are what every mahjong book, video and app uses to teach the game. That matters more than it sounds for a beginner: learning from a source that shows different tiles from the ones in your hand adds a layer of translation nobody needs.
What changes here is only the scale. The faces are the same; they are simply smaller.
At 20 x 14 x 10 mm this is properly small. A full 144 tile wall builds on a tray table, the whole set fits in a coat pocket, and it goes into a bag without displacing anything.
The cost is legibility across a table. Four people will lean in, and someone still learning the characters will find it harder than they would at 40 mm. For a suitcase this is right; for a weekly table at home it is not.
Small sets often drop to a light plastic and the tiles start to feel like counters. Dense amine keeps enough mass that a tile can be placed rather than dropped, which is a surprisingly large part of why mahjong feels the way it does.
144 tiles: 108 suit tiles, 16 winds, 12 dragons, 8 flowers and seasons. No jokers. This is the Chinese game, not the American one.
Barely damp cloth. Count the tiles back into the box every session, without exception at this size.
| Tiles | 144 |
|---|---|
| Tile size | 20 x 14 x 10 mm |
| Material | Dense amine |
| Colour | White |
| Weight | 0.7 kg (1.5 lb) |
| Age | 14 and over |
Actual size
Drawn to scale. Tile 20 x 14 x 10 mm, next to a standard credit card.
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.
Within the faces the colours are functional. Circles, bamboo and characters are printed in distinct colours so a hand can be sorted quickly, and the dragons are literally named red, green and white. The body of the tile carries no meaning. Traditional white, as here, has one practical advantage: it matches the illustrations in every teaching book and app a beginner is likely to use.
Suits, honours and bonuses, and the 144 count is built from them. There are 108 suit tiles, 3 suits of 9 values with 4 copies each; 28 honours, being the winds and dragons; and 8 bonus tiles, the flowers and seasons. Learning the game is largely learning that structure, which is why a set with traditional faces is easier to learn on than a decorative one.
The tiles are close enough that one set serves both, and this 144 count covers either. Where they part company is in the procedure around the hand. The Japanese game demands a scoring pattern before you may declare a win and adds a ready declaration; the Chinese game is more forgiving of a simple hand. Japanese sets also tend to omit the flowers this one includes.
Small tiles are the counterexample that explains the rule. At 20 by 14 by 10 mm this set weighs 0.7 kg complete, and weight is what drives shipping on a category of product that is otherwise unremarkable to manufacture. Where sets get expensive is size, count and finish. Reduce all three and the price follows down, which is why travel sets exist at all.
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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