Here is the biggest part of my collection of white "game" marbles. This jug is full and overflowing--need to start a new one! Surely everyone has a pile of these somewhere. Except for the fact that I have tried to keep an eye out for old handmade ballot box marbles, I have never attempted to identify the manufacturer of white marbles.
Gotta get your calcium somewhere, right?
An initial question in the mind of a collector looking at a marble is, “Who made this?” Color, quality, size, and design often point to one manufacturer or another, and inspire names for marbles. Marble manufacturers often name marbles themselves.
The earliest marbles were made from plain or dyed clay. The first modern marbles were made by hand, most notably in Germany from glass or ceramics. Eventually, marble making machines were invented and used by United States companies located in Ohio, Illinois, and West Virginia. A few U.S. companies still produce marbles today. Marbles were and are produced in other countries--some of my favorite marbles are those made by machine in Germany.
Suggestions:
1. Read all the books you can find on the subject of marble collecting.
I recommend that you get the latest ID Guide: Marble Collectors Handbook by Robert S. Block (2005) . This is the most recent Block handbook available. You can email me to order it. The handbook is organized by type and manufacturer. It includes pictures of many sought-after marbles, along with descriptions of types and historical information about their manufacturer and distribution. It also includes ranges of prices realized at Block auctions, which will give you an idea of value, though the range in most cases is quite wide.
A number additional books have been published. Click HERE for some of them.
Take a look at the great cats list on the Peterson web site: Top 30 Cat’s-Eyes.
2. Go to Marble Shows (see the list in the sidebar) where you can see great selections of marbles close-up. You will meet both new and experienced collectors with whom you can share information.
Find out what your new collector friends especially like, and how they identify them. Make notes as you learn, including contact details for those who have helped you.
3. Visit the marble discussion forums listed and linked in the side-bar. They are great fun and very helpful. You can ask for recommendations there, such as the names of experts or knowledgeable collectors in a specific area of interest, such as "Akro."
Each forum has a unique procedure for posting images. For some, you will need to link to a picture that you have uploaded to a picture hosting site or your own FTP site. Once you have your image uploaded, you will be able to enter the image address (http://... whatever.jpg). Other forums let you add a picture from your computer directly into your message. Learn by trial and error. And, do not dispair if you cannot figure it out. A great many others couldn't either. Just post a question about how to include images--someone will chime in and give you a hand.
Participate as often as you can in the forum(s) you find most interesting. If you have expertise, share it!
Collectors tout nostalgic hobby at Northwest Arkansas marble show
Flip Putthoff, The Morning News
At $6,500 for his most expensive marble, the glass orbs of children’s games aren’t kid stuff to collectors like Bill Cokenower.
He drove from Illinois to Northwest Arkansas to sell and show his collection Saturday with 34 other aficionados at the Ozark Marble Show.
Other marbles at the event cost as little as a dime, and a feast of color for the eyes was available at no charge to the steady stream of browsers who attended the show at the Springdale Holiday Inn.
Taunya Kopke of Fayetteville, who organized the show, said, to her knowledge, the event was the first of its kind for the region.
“Marbles are fun, and everybody needs a little fun,” said Kopke, who guessed her collection contains 30,000 marbles.
“The nearest marble show is in Tulsa,” she continued. “It’s hard to find marbles in this area, so a couple of other collectors and I got the idea to have it.”
Marble collector Sam Davisson of Sedalia, Mo., wore a leather top hat and a tie-dyed T-shirt while he hawked marbles at his booth. One table held hundreds of mass-produced marbles he sold for a few cents each. But the ones he is most proud of are the marbles he made himself.
“Machines spit out 3,000 to 4,000 marbles an hour. These are handmade,” he said, gesturing toward another table with marbles as big as softballs. “I spit these out at about 2,000 to 3,000 per year.”
A glass-blower by trade, the marbles Davisson makes range in price from $8 to $250.
So what determines the value of a marble?
“Eye appeal is number one,” Kopke said.
Marbles that are old, rare and in mint condition can bring high dollar at marble shows, she added.
Kopke got into collecting when she found some old marbles while walking along the shore of Beaver Lake when the water was low.
“I used to play marbles as a kid. I’d given my marbles to my brother and he lost them the first day,” she said.
When she found the marbles along the shore, she kept them on her desk and found herself mesmerized by the colorful glass balls.
“They just worked on me,” she said. “I bought a jar of marbles at a flea market and I was sifting through them when my husband came home. He told me had a jar of marbles in the closet.”
Kopke said she used to play marbles when she was a kid. Now she wouldn’t think of playing with her collection and risk diminishing its value.
Playing marbles may not be as popular nowadays as collecting the colorful globes, but Kopke said national and international marble tournaments are held that have pages of official rules. And people still make up their own marble games, she said.
Jeff Hale of Joplin wasn’t interested in selling any of the marbles on his table. They were for display only. He said his exhibit had at least one representation of every type of marble ever made.
Collecting marbles “is a rapidly growing hobby that is somewhat new,” Hale said.
“Think back years ago. What did we have? We had comic books, we had baseball cards and we had marbles,” Hale said. “Somewhere along the line, collectors started scarfing up all the baseball cards and comic books. But for some reason they forgot about marbles.”
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Though not all marble collectors played marbles as children, for many of us, the game was of great importance. I learned to play at recess in elementary school, in Flint, Michigan, with a few marbles given to me by friends. We played for keeps.
We followed a code of ethics passed on by children. If you lost all your player marbles, someone would donate a few so you could keep playing. We also hated to let you put your prized favorites into the ring. Better to give you a few plain ones, and give you a chance to come back.
On the other hand, if anyone had a good marble and didn't value it, it was a prime target! Marbles was simple. You looked in the ring for something you wanted, and you tried hard to knock it out of the ring with your shooter, which was hopefully just a little bigger than player marbles.
Disputes were resolved by kids themselves, calmly most of the time. However, yelling or fighting did occasionally erupt. If that happened, the game was suspended, often indefinitely—and you grabbed your marbles and got out of the way!
And the ring? A spot of ground without grass. In the second grade, one simple ring with a diameter of few feet would do. Older kids added a second, larger ring to make you move back away from the edge to shoot. The day after a rain was perfect for maintaining rings, for patting them out and re-drawing lines.
Most of us who played the game as children became collectors of a sort. We held onto our favorites as long as we could. Some managed to hold onto their prized winnings into adulthood. Others set out later in life to replace what they lost. The smile of a collector, former player or not, looking a marble for sale or trade at a show, is a match for the smile of a child, looking at a newly won marble on a playground. Pure delight.
