bumblebee

I think a good rule of thumb is "if it makes you smile, keep it". The problem with that rule though is I have several keepers that I keep because they're unusual and therefore rare, but they don't otherwise make me smile. But giving them up would mean I'll never see the likes of them again, so that makes me frown. So maybe a better rule is "If it doesn't make you frown to imagine never seeing it again, get rid of it."

I'm in the same boat if only because I have fewer and fewer scores each year.

This is a good point. To properly display my favorites I'd need a few more large solitaire type boards. I have a ton of Vitro tiger eyes, many of which are similar. I almost feel as though having so many distracts me from the ones that stand out. On the other hand, the colors and patterns of them bunched together also bring a smile to my face. I think I would be more willing to let many go if I knew they were going to a newer collector who would get more joy out of them.

My collection is not huge but too large to display reasonably. I have a lot of commons in very nice condition. I was thinking of downsizing but I pause because I have regretted selling every marble I have ever sold except bulk dinged up lots. Has anyone downsized and actually become happier with their collection as a result?

My first and only Royals with aventurine, all in the same score a few years back.

Wow some killer marbles he has sold but many look odd in the photos. Might be his lighting.

As a boy I remember my favorite marbles were the older ones which were always beat up, but I don't remember being upset about that until they were missing so much glass that we retired them and used them for other purposes. The older ones intrigued me because they had more exotic colors and swirl patterns. Now that I know what wet mint looks like on the older ones, I am harder to please but I still enjoy my big tub of place holders which still evoke that memory of the exotic old marbles I remember seeing as a boy.

Too young!

Welcome back!

I got my copy too. Definitely worth the price, but not much description for identification, but pictures are good enough for that.

Very neat and handsome marble!

I'm really surprised it is that high with that much damage. Imagine it being mint!

This is one of those auctions where it is almost futile to try to explain to a non-collector, or even a non-Pelt-head. 😜 https://www.ebay.com/itm/224660871436

Got this oddball cork with aventurine in a killer score, along with a matching patch. Need to take better pictures though. Cork on left, patch on right. Obviously original owner from the wild kept these two on purpose, as there were no others in the bags like these.

Interestingly, traditional "aniseed ball" candy looks like a 1/2" marble but is formed of hardened layers of sugar candy around a rapeseed seed. I had them in Ireland and they are rock hard like jaw breakers, so you have to suck them patiently. I was surprised the first time I got to the center and found a seed, although the seed in mine looked more like an actual aniseed rather than rapeseed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aniseed_ball

Like these railroad crossing sign reflectors, which are sort of half a marble with their bodies all glass, the bottom half being painted a pale green. The fellow said his dad probably took them off signs during his railroad job back in the 1940s. I got 40 of the red and 23 of the clear, so enough to get crafty!

That's a very nice agate, likely vintage handmade in Germany, in a rare blue color. Agate is a form of chalcedony. Here's a useful excerpt from an 1887 London paper article of an interview with a mineralogist. Note he says carnelian is not banded, but elsewhere I have seen carnelian is used to describe the typical reddish color of banded agates...I need to pick up the slack on my research!:

I was enjoying sniping some nice agates at low prices on eBay during the past couple of years, but clearly there are some new old kids in town with deeper pockets and just as sharp eyes. This first one was a premium agate with an unusual bullseye to boot. At shooter size for they really do not get better than in this color in my experience, so I should have bid higher than $51. (I recall a newspaper article from early 20th century saying jewelry shops would purchase the highest grade agates like this for use in their creations. Will have to look that up.) While this is a premium agate at an usually larger size with uncommon chocolately shades, I have not seen one go for this much in a very long time. I attribute that more to this being from a popular seller, so lots of competition. I personally would trade this one below for the one above if given the chance, but not if I spent $138 on it!

Here, here! MarbleConnection is the oldest and largest marble collecting forum on the Web. Unlike FB where interesting and valuable information seemingly vanishes into oblivion in a day, forums like this encourage discussion, reflection, learning, and storing of valuable historic and cultural information about this great hobby. I encourage everyone to use the search features to discover just how much great content there is on here. I am grateful to Lou for allowing me to help repair it and take over operations back in early 2019. I will keep it going as long as I can. Thanks to generous donations from members, I have not had to pay out of pocket this past year for the hosting, domain name, or licensing support fees. YTD, we have seen a 33% increase in visitor activity year over year with more engagement: If growth continues, at some point in the future I could upgrade the hosting to much faster, but that would likely add $150 annually to recurring fees. So far it seems snappy enough for me but of course as more users pile on it can slow down. Will just have to wait and see! Fun fact: because this site is so old and reputable among the search engines, I get daily requests from "search engine optimization experts" who want to pay me to post articles that link back to their sites. The reason they do this is because when an old and reputable site links out to another site, the search engines consider this an endorsement or voucher that those sites are reputable. Then the search engines give those sites a little boost in their rankings. I ignore all these because the sites in question are almost always spammy and unrelated to marble collecting. Not-so-fun fact: Forums like ours are under constant attack from spammers and "bots" which are automated computer programs trying to break in or post spam. 95% of our new user sign-ups are fake and they never confirm their accounts, but our system is programmed to delete those after two weeks if they don't confirm their accounts, which saves me a lot of work. Sometimes these attacks force me to require users from some countries to solve a "CAPTCHA" code to prove they are real users. Recently we have been getting about 2.9k attacks a day from servers in the UK, so unfortunately our legitimate UK users have to solve a CAPTCHA each session before they can use the site.

I went to buy old books yesterday from a private party when I spotted a coffee can full of marbles mostly from 60s/70s with lots of bright Vitro Agates. He let my cherry pick 10 or so, and said that was just 1/3 of the collection. He'll be contacting me when he pulls the rest. Here's some of the better ones for under a dollar each, taken by my trademark $1500 camera and lens combo that always looks like a 1990s web cam photo when I take photos of marbles. 😜

Moderators can restore deleted posts, if that helps?

Unfortunately you cannot "polish" photos with this many problems. The sharpening tools can't work miracles.

...you want pristine and special, but so often the glory is ruined by damage, or in my case, blurry focus. Spent 20 minutes trying to capture young Harlequin duck shooting the rapids and finally had my shot but it came out in NM- condition (or worse). Still, you can tell what a beauty it might have been.

Wow that's a very healthy collection. Enjoyed variety and nice orderly layout.

Ad from April, 1944, San Fernando Valley Times.