bumblebee

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.

Another forum did this years ago during Christmas. As a sender and recipient, I found it enjoyable but I did not have to manage it. I'm too busy to manage it, but I can help with ideas and such. I recall everyone submitted their info privately to a manager, who then randomized the match ups and contacted everyone with their recipient info. There were also deadlines to ensure each got his/hers within a few days of each other. I think rules such as the following would ensure more fun: 1. Agree to send at least $10 in marbles at current street value. This allows newer collectors to participate but ensures everyone gets something fun. 2. When people sign up, have them tell the manager how long they have collected and what their favorites styles/makers are. This optional info can help a designated sender create a more exciting marble mail if their collection allows. I'd rather send hybrid cats to a cat-eye lover than a nice cork they won't appreciate. It could also end up being more fun if people were matched semi-randomly based on how many years they have collected. That way the stuff they are getting is more of a match to their experience. Thoughts?

Kinda makes one wonder how they ever figured this stuff out in the first place.

Don't forget you can boil your agates in lard to hide those moons!

Hi there! Right now the gallery settings appear to be very generous, even unlimited. Movies aren't allowed, however. Since I took over running the site there hasn't been a lot of gallery usage or questions, but galleries should definitely stay on topic, i.e. no cat photos unless your cat is playing with marbles. Posting limits are pretty generous too, but members can't hide or delete their own posts (this setting was set when I inherited the site). To save disk space the board will resize post images to 1920x1080. I just increased that from 1024x768. This has proven helpful to the inexperienced users who did not know how to resize their own camera photos prior to posting, and therefore could not fit their photos in a post. I believe the per post size limit is 50mb. I hope that helps!

Those are fun and colorful. If they came with marbles, I assume most came with clays or slags?

In a similar vein, this Aug 22, 1863 Lancaster Gazette article quotes the Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine:

From The Ottawa Free Trader, Dec. 15, 1855. I had not seen this article before. It has interesting details on the dyeing processes. There isn't a legible OCR text so I'll try to post images of it here in order.

That's just fine. Collect what makes you smile, not what others say are top shelf. Some of my $10 hand cut agates give me more warm fuzzies than a CAC cobra marbles that somebody paid $300 for. Of course, if CACs were common, I'd certainly collect more of them.

Joe's family rescued his site hosting and it's back up, hopefully indefinitely: http://joemarbles.com/

I have a couple that are this darker brown color with bullseyes. In my experience these are less common than the black and white "striped onyx" ones. Structurally they look just like other banded agates to me. I glanced at the book Colonial Period and Early 19th-Century Children's Toy Marbles which says the Brazilian agates (which are naturally grey or or bluish-grey and were sold as "flinties") would first turn brown when left in the sun, then eventually red. Perhaps this style of agate is just the brown stage of sun dyeing? To my eye they are less appealing than the red ones. I don't recall seeing agate ware such as letter openers in this color either, but perhaps someone has. What I couldn't find in the book are descriptions of the colors of locally mined agate used prior to the mass importation of South American agates starting around 1834.

Another sad loss. Very young too. 😭 I referenced his site many times over the years as a great source to see a variety of different marble types.

Wow some great and unusual stuff!

I got a great "owl eye" agate from a privy digger. Had what appears to be a shovel mark on it though. These marbles all have interesting stories. Some were likely thrown in to punish somebody else. Some slipped out of pockets. A few may have been, um, deposited by children who may have swallowed a marble, perhaps?