bumblebee

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?

These folks show their marble finds from 50+ years of digging old privies: https://www.antique-bottles.net/threads/50-years-of-privy-digging.691383/#post-724003

Those are neat! Patterns resemble vintage rubber balls but look made of sandstone.

Try going to https://images.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl Then search for marbles window and see what shows up. I see some very neat ones. What would be really neat is to find a double-pane window wide enough to drop clearies into.

Nice handsome fellow! I've never found that color combo in the wild (not that I find many Pelts anyway!).

This was my best in recent memory. It was from a jar with mostly vintage common damaged mibs (including a peewee lutz) but then this shockingly mint brick. I think I paid $20. Took me a few minutes to talk myself out of believing this was contemporary. FullSizeRender.MOV

I knew somebody who had an amazing Master shooter with tons of colors. I swear it looked mint in hand but under a loupe it had been polished. Never occurred to me to check all my mint marbles but somebody did a very good job. There was very interesting pattern on the whole surface of the marble but too subtle for the naked eye.

I've never heard of a Czech circus marble. I have heard of a German Circus Marble. This marble has a neat pattern and construction. And don't forget those Bulgarian "carnival" marbles.

This way he just tells people to search cedarman7 and his listings come up too.

Yeah I never offer returns on large lots. Would be a nightmare with a dishonest buyer.

Weird that it's happening from multiple accounts. Do you have any reason to believe there is an old bad blood buyer trying to make your life hard? The company I work for has a person who has consistently ordered a large purchase once a year and then cancels the order saying they cannot afford it. This has happened for six years straight.

From what I remember playing marbles, the thrill was based in the scarcity of good marbles and the fair chance to win or lose them. There was some sort of important lesson in loving a small beautiful thing that you won while at the same time knowing you could lose it some day. Perhaps knowing that you could win it back, or even win a better one the next day, made letting go of it that much easier. There was also that mystery of the older marbles that some kids had. They had better colors and patterns, but usually scars. They were like stories and characters from the past who were playing among us.

I ran a few Library of Congress black and white photos through this amazing tool with some great results: https://deepai.org/machine-learning-model/colorizer