bumblebee

Nice meaty Master and an Andre the Bee.

Finally, my mint-range slags have a place called home. No more plastic show-off trays for these classics! Edit: for the pixel peepers, yes I snuck a few Japanese "transitionals" in there.

I'm flirting with other collecting hobbies, but nature photography is becoming my other hobby since I moved to MT. Another collecting hobby I've been drawn to are the vintage tobacco cards. They're small, generally very affordable, and have vast topics and neat artwork.

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For $80 locally, I picked this up and couldn't be happier. Three trays that each hold 312 5/8" marbles (two per compartment) and a deeper bottom tray for bulk marbles. Primary con is that since the marbles "wiggle" in the concave slots, you can't position them ideally and keep them in place. Pro side effect of that is a really neat wiggling marble sound when you open the trays. Don't think I'll be putting glass killers in here except maybe shooters, but the agates feel very right displayed this way.

That one's crazy. I didn't even see that one when I checked a day or two ago. I may have bid had I seen it. I call it a Silly String.

Nice! Only 10 days left!

Some sort of phantom conqueror? A biscuits and gravy (never seen one of these in the wild), and what at first glance appears to be a chunky hybrid cat?

When I was a kid I thought Mr. Bill was the greatest thing ever. You darn near nicknamed that marble a Mr. Bill but the colors just don't quite conjure him.

Wow some of those are quite mesmerizing.

Hey, who slipped a cannon ball in there?

Yahoo!'s famous forum Groups are shutting down December 14, among them The Marble Collectors Club - The Best Identification Photos of all Clubs which began in 1999. Some old timers may remember it. For posterity, I saved an archive of all the messages. Yahoo! provided it in a large text file which I've attached here. Not particularly a friendly format, but you can search it for keywords. yahoo_group_marble_collectors_club.txt

I want to but nothing so far has grabbed my imagination and sense of beauty like marbles, not to mention the thrill of the hunt aspect where condition is king.

Now we're cooking with gas! My 2nd favorite after that on-fire Euro swirl. You should do this every year, Steph!

Took me about 45 minutes to accept it wasn't a contemporary remake, but later, under a loupe, I could see micro flea bites and the glass in better light, and I knew it was vintage. Ah the simple ecstasies of this hobby. If only they were more frequent!

I really need to contact this booth seller and see where she fished this from. Maybe she's got an original box at home!

I guess I don't get to gripe about our high of 34 today. Is that Christmas CAC?

Whoah that big euro swirl just silenced the room.

Hah! After I convinced myself it wasn't a contemporary remake, I let out a shandababa or two myself.

...it would tell me how on earth it stayed mint and made its way into a $20 jar of beat up vintage marbles. Either way, I'm not complaining! (I am, however, tempted to ask the booth seller if they have more of these somewhere in an old box...) FullSizeRender.MOV

Wow that really puts an extra twist on this day! Is that other one a MK "beach ball" ?

Is the other a Whitie for a whitie Christmas?

That's a perfect Christmas cork!

Wow a spotted dick soccer ball. That's not something I've ever seen out in the wilds of America. The swirl gets my patented "WV swirl" shrug. This thread is getting me into the holiday spirit. Time to hang Christmas lights!

Hi, any collector would be happy to get genuine stone marbles from the 16th through 19th century, although most are very dull shades of gray and brown. I don't know that I'd pay more than $20 for a small pile of them unless it had a lot of variety or interesting colors. Some prettier antique "marble marbles" and pinkish "blood alley" types with red lines are certainly worth a few $ each though I rarely see them for sale. My personal favorite are the dyed hand cut and polished German agate marbles from the late 19th century, especially the bullseye types with high contrast bands. Typical nice examples fetch $5 to $30 each but fancy examples in bigger sizes or rarer colors like green and blue can command $40 to $60 each or more on occasion. Note that these are vintage ones evidenced by the hand-faceting channels visible on the surface under strong light or a loupe. Some vintage marble collectors also fancy the contemporary mineral spheres which some would call marbles, simply for their beauty.