crashbelt

Here's another of my boards. Beautiful 9" mahogany board with 17mm finely faceted mibs, so from the older period. 14 micas, including a pale yellow, and 2 deeply coloured dark blue/grey, 17 onions including some same cane and a lefty or two, and a single cloud - all wet mint. I'm pretty convinced this is an original set and its an interesting example of the decisions the UK game manufacturers made in choosing which imported German handmade for their best sets.

Years ago I bought this very ordinary looking Chad Valley 6"x6" board with German pee wees. It was poorly photographed on eBay so I took a chance as it was very cheap. I was delighted when it arrived to find two same cane alternating blue/white latticino swirls and two red latts in 3 divided ribbon form. Its funny the craftsmanship that went into the glass designs of those mibs but with very crude ground pontils for a roughly made board. I have the original box and I've not seen another.

The pride of my collection of boards are both complete Jaques Magic Number Squares with glazed ceramic numbered marbles on beautiful turned mahogany boards. Both have lozenge shaped marks dating the game copyright to the 1850s although they could have been made in the 1860s too. I am very lucky to have found these many years ago.

I like simple one colour solid cores - I've heard them called candle cores but not sure if people still use that term. The small ones are from a Chad Valley solitaire board.

Some of my favourite boards are the simplest and smallest - 7 1/2" mahogany board with bun feet 12-14mm pink/green onionskins. Nothing to indicate the maker. Pontils are ground but very finely so I'll hazard a guess at some time around the end of the faceted period and the early ground period. Again my bet is that this set has always been together.

Very nice set - exceptionally clean box too. I have a couple of these in my Solitaire Board collection. Made by Jacob Wolf Spear and Son, a toy manufactuer established in a small town near Nurenberg in the 1870s, and in business until being bought out by Mattel in the 1990s. The Jewish Spears fled to the UK in the 1930s and famously made the very popular Scrabble game. The board is beech I think and the mibs for these sets are usually transparent banded swirls, although one of my sets has latts and solid cores. You can see from the instructions on the inside of your box lid, reference to placing the 'red man' in the centre hole. My sets have a dyed red clay marble with the 32 glass handmades - presumably the 'red man', and the centre hole is marked with red dye from years of being stored that way. Great to see such a fine example!!

I'm lucky enough to have been collecting German handmades and solitaire boards in the UK for over 30 years! They were a lot easier to come by in flea markets and junk shops all those years ago, armed only with the Everett Grist and Paul Baumann books!

Oops just missed Thuringen Thursday. Oh well since there's a bit of a pee wee theme, here's one of my favourite boards with tiny Benningtons - 10-11mm. Since these cheap fruitwood swivel-tray boards usually came with cheaper non-glass mibs I'm assuming this is an original set.

Here's another of my solitaire boards - 11/16" onionskins on a beautiful board with bun feet. The marbles are all nicely faceted, so its from the early period, and it sure looks like an original set. The onions are a mix of 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6 panels. No sign of any mica but a really pretty set.

Since we've mentioned brown micas here's a solitaire set with 19mm micas - I'd describe as dark amber grading through to dark brown. An early set as very finely finished pontils - none are cased in clear of course. Not an unusual colour but I'm rather fond of it!!

Wow Chad that sure could be a real black mica. Baumann did talk about some very rare purple micas being so dark that there's no mica inside, but an outer layer cased in clear which your first pic appears to be. So it could be the same treatment for a real black one. Great if there are any more pics around to shed some more light!!

I've never seen a black mica. The darkest of my purples look almost black but are clearly purple when I shine a bright light through them. Paul Baumann's book Antique Marbles, which was my main reference for collecting German marbles, doesn't refer to black among the rare colours he lists. I'd love to see one!!

Here from my collection is another (6th I think) instalment of solitaire boards - this time all small micas. The 2 square boards are from late-Victorian Ayres Games Compendiums. Bottom left is a set with purple micas which are quite rare and I've never seen another complete set. To be honest they don't display that well because the glass is nearly opaque unless you shine a bright light through them, but its a very cool set to have.

Here's few swirls.

Can't resist a group of onionskins - nothing large or rare here but I love the way they look together!

I love these bits of old canes that were dug up in Thuringen.

Wow - thanks for all that advice. Just confirms my complete lack of knowledge of US machine-mades!! Here's a close up of the green slags. They're 9/16"-5/8" and I can't find any trace of pontil marks. I doubt that will enable any more light to be shed on the makers from your advice and I can't date the mibs or the board to pre or post 1914. Here's also a close up of the other 3 - they're more like 11/16"-3/4". Any further enlightenment would be great, but I'm just happy to have a complete set of green slag marbles with the mahogany board - makes a nice change from all my Germans!!!

I would appreciate some help please. All my vintage solitaire boards have German handmades except this one I bought in Edinburgh 25 years ago. I have a few 20th Century boards with European (I think) machine mades but this one is unique to my collection as appearing to be old but with maybe American early machine made marbles. I wondered if the 9-shaped swirls in the glass meant they could be MFC slags, but I haven't a clue really! Any advice would be great. Whilst on the subject I have just 3 other mibs which I think could be US machine mades too and any thoughts on those would be really cool too. Thanks in advance, and if you need more pics to helps I'll gladly oblige!

Here is a set of Victorian marble game boards from my collection, but this time they are not solitaire boards but other rare types of marble games from the 1850-1880 period. Upper left is a Jaques' Royal Garrison Game board, a larger variant of German Tactics. It is set up with 50 'men' and 3 'officers'. The mica marbles are not original to the board, but are consistent with an image I have seen of an all original board with micas. The little board on the lower left is the Star Puzzle, again I believe made by Jaques. Non-original marbles. On the right are two Nine Mens Morris (also known as Merelles or The Mill) boards, set up as they would should be with two opposing sets of 9 marbles. These too are not original marbles to the boards. The larger one came with a few dyed agates which could well be original to the board, but too few to make up the numbers so I have put some swirls and onions on the board. Thanks to the Marble Connection for the opportunity to share images of my boards with German marbles with your community of mib-enthusiasts!

Great thread. Thanks for posting these examples and descriptions. Fascinating to learn about these rarities.

Here is another image showing some nice, if not very rare, solitaire boards from my collection. I believe all these sets are original, and all the marbles are faceted types from the earlier period. Sizes are c 14mm, 17mm, 21mm and 25mm. I plead guilty to adding the red mica to the 32 marble 17mm set! I have found micas to be the most common marbles on English solitaire sets after swirls. I have plenty of others which I'll post another time. A set of reds would be the holy grail - I've never seen one.

Hi - here's a couple more solitaire boards with German handmade from my collection. Standard 33 hole boards, but both with complete, and I presume original sets of Joseph's Coats in great condition. They're 14/15mm and 17/18mm and it was great to find them all still together. Cheers Dave

Great examples of German handmades in this thread. Bit late to the party but here's some of mine. They range in size from 2 5/8" the tri-level Swirl to 1 5/8" the EOD Cloud.

Hi - I'm feeling guilty since promising in 2018 to post some more examples from my collection of turned board games, it's taken 3 years!!! So here's a couple of incredibly rare Victorian boards by F H Ayres - the 81 hole 9 x 9 and the 49 hole 7 x 7 sets dating to around 1860-1880 I believe. They both take small marbles - around 9/16" for the 9 x 9 and 1/2" the 7 x 7. Unlike most of my boards, the marbles are not original to the sets sadly. But I've filled them with some of my favourites from my stash. The 9 x 9 is all onions with the odd Joseph. The 7 x 7 includes fairly common pee wee swirls, mica etc. But there's a cloud, a gooseberry, 3 naked ribbons (2 same cane), a Joseph, 2 same cane red latt ribbons a red latt, a 3 stage caged orange and white latt, 2 Indians, and 2 same cane alternating blue/white latts. Hope you like the pics. Ask me any questions and I'll try not to take another 3 years to put some more up!! Cheers Dave

Thanks Vancecrash - collecting Victorian turned game boards with handmade marbles has been a rewarding passion for many years. The lines on the Jaques Numerical Puzzle boards are painted or perhaps inked on. They appear to be under the final finish coat and show no wear. Under close magnification they are very straight and even - much finer than the German Tactics lines on a few solitaire boards I examined for comparison. I may post some other rarer sets on the main thread so a few more people may see them.