1. Budgeting
The price of a puzzle is affected by the size of the puzzle, quality and the picture of the puzzle. Puzzles made by reputable manufacturer will definitely cost more than puzzles from unknown brand. A good puzzle manufacturer makes quality puzzles and they provide help if you realized your puzzle has a missing piece. Quality puzzles are nicely cut and the printing of the puzzle is good. I will strongly recommend to purchase puzzle from good manufacturer. If you have a limited budget, do consider a smaller puzzle instead. In the market now, there are various types of puzzles like glow in the dark, globe, 3D, rich color printing, crystal neo or wood. These types will also cost more than normal puzzles. Patented art will cost more too. For example, Disney character, Micheal Jackson or Snoopy. These will cost more than normal photographic or art drawing puzzles.
2. Number of pieces
This is important when you have limited time to play or when you are new to jigsaw puzzle. I will recommend starters to choose puzzle of less than 500 pieces. You can slowly increase the number of piece when you feel more comfortable challenging bigger ones. If you giving the completed puzzle as a gift, you should make sure you have sufficient time to complete. Do consider if you have enough time and patience, otherwise, you might end up keeping the uncompleted puzzle in some corner of your house.
3. Puzzle Picture
Picking the right picture is important too, as it affects how much time you will take to completed the puzzle. A difficult picture will be those that have very few colors or contains monotonous colors. For a starter, you should pick a picture that have a reasonable amount of details with various colors and does not have big patch of area of one color. In my blog, i give difficulty ratings of puzzle based on color and picture. You can use it to match with your strength to pick a puzzle that suits you. If you are sensitive to the color, you are able to identify the different tones of a color, you can pick those puzzle with high color difficulty. Same applies if you are good with details.
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| Too little colors and detals (Diffcult) |
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| Too little colors (Difficult) |
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| Reasonable amount of details and colourful (Easy) |
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| Too much details and colorful (Moderate) |
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| Colorful and reasonable amount of details but some are repetitive (Moderate) |
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| Some details and color with a big patch of blue sky (Difficult) |
4. Framing
Some puzzle dimension has suitable ready-made frames selling in Puzzleworld. For those that is of irregular shape or does not follow the standard dimension, you have to send the completed puzzle to frame-makers. They used thin glass instead of clear plastic to cover the puzzle and hence they will charge you more for materials and workmanship. Those frames cannot be reused. It can be rather troublesome to send the puzzle to the frame-maker. One option is to invest on a puzzle mat. Puzzle mat allows you to roll up the puzzle so that you can keep it away or carry it around.
