bumblebee

I stumbled on this article from 1936 and press photo from 1933 that revealed Harold Lloyd was a serious marble player in his youth who became a serious collector as an adult. It is not every day you hear of a serious marble collector in 1933, especially a famous one. The press photo reads as follows, and I assume the 'cat's eyes' were tiger eyes: I was very curious to find better photos of Harold's impressive-sounding agate collection, so I reached out to his agency in the off chance that somebody still had his collection. After a few weeks, I got a reply. Not the one I had hoped for entirely, but I was delighted and thankful for their efforts. Harold's granddaughter was the one who provided the status of his marbles, according to the rep:

Sweet marble. It looks terrific complementing those flames. Never held one like that in hand.

Here's two Akro Royals with heavy AV and a middle one without AV. I have also seen someone with a green one with black AV. Here's an unusual cork and matching patch with a scattering of AV

This is all I have so far, the biggest being about 7/8". Compared to the carnelian and "onyx" black banded agates, blue and green are hard to find, with green being the hardest to find in my experience. Books mention yellow being even rarer, but I have never seen a yellow one. I doubt they would hold much eye appeal with the low contrast of yellow on white bands. The Germans knew how to dye them red in the 18th century, but the blue dye didn't start until 1845, then green in 1855 according to "Colonial Period and Early 19th-Century Children's Toy Marbles". Possible other reasons why they may be so scarce: Perhaps these were more costly to dye or more difficult to dye, and therefore fewer were made. I do notice they differ much more in color variation than red or black, so that inconsistency may have proven expensive or undesirable in other agate products that were being mass produced in the grinding mills. Perhaps these colors were not as popular to buyers as banded red or black. Perhaps their original owners loved them so much that most are still squirreled away in sock drawers and closets. This may account for a bit of the scarcity, but I have seen a couple of original agate boxes and do notice the blue or green ones are fewer in number to the carnelians or onyx ones. Whatever the case, I want more!

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This forum used to recognize the BBcode for inserting images as discussed in this thread with the img tag encased in brackets, but the recent major update disabled that. Now it works again just like so (I'm copying cheese's original post example):

Well I was right: it was disabled in the update, but there is still an option to enable it, so I checked that. They did warn that it may go away in future versions though.

I will ask support why. There was a major update in the last month that may have disabled this feature. [img]https://i.ibb.co/BCY9hT0/DSC06301.jpg[/img]

Wow that first pinkish one is amazing. Always a rare color but I doubt I have even half that much of that color in all my Masters. Nice!

My aggies are still among my most prized marbles. I spend more time looking at them than my glass marbles. I think part of that is because I can handle them and not worry about chipping them.

Some real killers in there!

With marble history there is so much more to find out what we don't know about.

Very nice. A couple in there I've never found in any condition.

Nice juicy pelts! Imagine the thrill back in the day having access to brand new boxes of these mint beauties.

Here's a couple of articles. From 1925 Los Angeles Times: And from 1924 Los Angeles Times:

I'd trust your memory over mine but some searching at newspapers.com reveals the earliest instance of "snot agate" is 1914 where they do not describe it at all. A 1921 article from Kansas, however, mentions a "cloudy" being worth three "chinese" and then mentions a "brandy" being equal to "two glassies" thus perhaps suggesting a cloudy is not glass. I mention that because a couple of weeks later somebody wrote in and said "The 'cloudies' mentioned were perhaps the kind that went by the polite name of 'snot agates' with us." Whether he is right about a cloudy being nicknamed a snot agate, the fact is he is talking in 1921 about the marbles of his youth, so we may safely say that he was speaking of at least 10 or 15 years earlier. Later articles such as one from 1952 mentions commies, crockeries, glassies, snot agates, pure agates, flinties. A 1956 article mentions snotties as a "cloudy transparent type" that was a class below the real bullseye agates. A 1964 article about what boys did in 1912 says ""snot agate glass taws were five cents and real agates were 25 cents."" Then this delightful article from 1937:

My slags have all become snot-agates thanks to this great little article from The Yale Democrat (Yale, Oklahoma), 24 Mar 1920:

That's a long career in marble collecting. I bet you have some real killers!

Nice aggie! It is always refreshing and exciting to find a genuine antique lot of marbles these days. It always gives me hope there's more out there...

Not bad for Montana! Hard to find anything pre-1960s here.

That's actually one I would like too assuming it has a wicked 9 and is as large as they come.

I almost made a $1 offer on the Alley Galaxy, but stopped when I realized I'd be paying $5 with shipping.

My Montana town finally got fed up with the lockdown and have been having cruises on Fridays. Living in the 4th largest state with only 1 million residents has its advantages:

Hey that might make a neat night light. A blacklight covered in glowers.

Nice variety dish mixing it up but they seem to go together.