manylittle

You mentioned MK spidermen and parrots going for $250....and now they go for? I think its a good thing in this discussion to know just exactly how much the market has been effected by comparing before and after prices. That way, we can possibly get an idea of percentage of price declines. Also, if you are seeing a rise in any prices that had previously gone down, that would be interesting to know, also. That is a nice silk cabinet. Great for storing smalls like marbles...and you can organize them by category in the different drawers.!!!!

Ya, we sort of got off subject, but that is what happens in conversations. One thing leads to another. What about the economy? I had a discussion about this with one of the chief officers of the Wisconsin Badger Marble Club. We were discussing the decline in the price of popeyes in the last few years. He felt that the economy has had a major factor also. He said that the effect of the internet had evened itself out quite a while ago. I also think that the digs from the factory sites had an effect on certain machine mades that used to be hard to find. If the economy is a factor, do you think that as things continue to get better, that prices may go up? There is a fewer percentage of people all the time who have the type of incomes that they can afford to pay $1,000.00 for a marble, much less $5 or $8 grand. I keep hoping I'll find some wealthy someone on my dating site that will fall head over heals for me and tell me, yes , sweetheart, you can have any little marble your heart desires !!!!!

Who is the 'you' that you are talking about. I sure hope that you really mean 'they' and aren't meaning 'me'? lol. If you go into a mall and you want to 'dicker' go to the desk and ask the clerk to get the owner of the item on the phone if she can. Most malls now have cell phones that don't charge for long distance calls like the old land lines did and do so the cost of the call is no longer a deterant. If you ask nicely, he or she probably will try and get ahold of the owner of the item unless they have specified that they are not to be called. I know that over the phone is not as fun and you can't read the person's body language to see if they are close to accepting near your offer, but at least you don't have to accept a 10% discount. When I worked for one of the larger malls near me, we would often have to call the owner of the items, especially if the customer wanted more than one item. I can understand the reason for the 10% discount rule when the clerk is not the owner of the item. The booth renter has to have some trust that the clerk is not going to give his or her item away, just to get a sale. After all, the clerk has no idea what the booth renter paid for the item, has not done the research on the item, and has no authority to do anything other than what the rules of the store give him or her.

Are there colors of moss agates that are more rare than others? Is one of them orange? That seems to be a color that comes up as rarer than others in many different types of marbles so thought I would ask the experts. I am also seeing many patches on ebay that are called moss agates even by well known dealers that have opaque patches and the traditional mossy type translucent base color. I was always taught that to be a true moss agate, both the base color and the patch had to be translucent. What is your opinion? This moss agate is a mint or a terribly near mint....just in case I missed something...lol....21/32.

One of my favorite things to do, either by myself or with a fellow antiquer, is to take the day and travel around, browsing through the antique stores that I find along the way. I get to see lots of beautiful countryside along the way, sometimes stopping to feed my passion for nature, landscape and wildlife photography, finding somewhere to enjoy a meal at a mom and pop's restaurant. I enjoy the feeling while I am digging around in an antique store or flea market, that that one treasure is just around the corner whether it be a hybrid popeye marble in someone's quart jar of mixed marbles for $5 or that advertising picture of Uncle Sam for $15 at a flea market that paid my property taxes for the year when It sold!!! I never know what I am going to find, and that is part of the adventure, the joy of the hunt !! I, also have fond memories of our local hardware store. The Thode brothers had had their stores for decades and if they did not have it, no one did, and the amazing thing was that they knew where everything was !!! When the store came up for sale, I almost bought it. I was told that I could only go upstairs if I took the risk, as the stairway was sort of 'iffy' and so I did not go. I should have. I did not go upstairs, but I later found out that it was full of 70 years of toys left over from Christmas Sales. I could have paid for the building by selling those toys!!! That is one of my biggest, kick myself in the but, mistakes I have ever made. !!!! Oh well, life goes on.

By the way, Thanks Kbobam, for that nice comment....maybe this 'newbie' has something to contribute, after all !!!! lol

When I was a teenager, I worked as a dishwasher in a nursing home. I was making minimum wage. I was making good money I thought, even with part time hours. My parents divorced when I was 15 or so, and although at first, my mom got child support, and had some income from the sale of her dad's farm and some other land, it became harder and harder for her to make ends meet, but she said nothing. It got worse after my brother hit 18 and her child support was cut in half. Our father was an alcoholic and would not have offered a dime more to help. (Mom was unable to work, due to a physical disability from injuries from a car accident when I was just a baby). I became aware of the situation the day I came home to find someone in the act of shutting off the electricity. I promptly paid the bill and went inside to have a 'conversation' with my mom. I was 20 and working as a waitress for the summer at a local restaurant. At that time, I took over the role as the main wage earner and bill payer for my family. Then, not even two weeks later, my mom died from a sudden unexpected heart attack. She was 56. I found myself with the sole responsibility of taking over 100% of the bills of maintaining a very large brick two story house, and having a brother who was in collage. He, thank God, had a full scholarship, but still needed money with books and just general living expenses that his scholarship did not cover. I would send him money for books, and get a letter that would say..'Thanks for the money Vic, I bought a banjo...still need the books'. lol I'd send him the extra $100 because I knew that life was unpredictable and that someday the shoe would be on the other foot. I was right and will always be extremely grateful that I have such a great brother, but that is another story.....The point is that I was able to meet all of our needs on a minimum wage job and I did not have to worry about juggling the bills around and robbing peter to pay paul. The main point that I am trying to make is that if the minimum wage from when I was young, had kept up with the cost of living it would be $22 per hour now. No one, working at a full time minimum wage job would be below the poverty line and if both the husband and wife were working full time minimum wage jobs they would be in what is now considered the middle class and they would have the money for modest luxuries such as antiques and yes, even marbles !!!!!

Having owned a walk in, or as they call it, a 'bricks and mortar' antique shop for 26 years now, I can tell you that there were more things than just the internet that has affected their decline. During the late '80's thru early '90's, their was an upsurge in antique collecting because of the decorating styles being advertised in all of the magazines and decorating shows. Kitchen collectibles and primitives were very hot and I could bring the results from an auction buying trip into my store and have a profit made before I got everything out on the shelves...it was crazy....antique dealers were making money hands over fists, which got the attention of those people who are always out there to make 'easy money'. The upsurge in the number of Antique Malls was a direct response to that in order to cater to all of these new 'antique dealers' But there was one thing wrong. There was not enough good stuff to go around and the new people simply did not know what was good and what was not. More and more, one would go into an antique mall and you would see booth after booth full of flea market JUNK!! It was discouraging to buyers to have to sort through all of those booths to find just a few good things. The rise of ebay staved off the inevitable for a while as at the beginning, things on ebay would bring good prices simply because of the novelty and the excitement of the experience. That, however, did not last as the excitement wore off once one got used to it. Eventually the expected happened and more and more of the get rich quick people that had no emotional love for the antiques trade got out of the business. That meant that more and more malls that were used to completely rented out booths and a waiting list of renters, hand to start tightening their belts due to unrented spaces. One can only fill so many empty booths with your own stuff unless you are really committed to the business. Those who survived ended up with stores that had a combination of walk-in traffic, an online presence in online malls such as Ebay, TIAS, Ruby Lane, Go Antiques, etc., and who recruited good antique dealers to rent their booths who were dedicated to filling them with good quality antiques and collectibles. Single person antique stores had to adapt to the times also. In may own case, one other factor has made me decide that it is time to sell my building and go to renting a booth in a mall and selling online. That is, that where as once, due to the popularity of a local restaurant called the Norske Nook, that was famous for its pies,......its owner had made pies on Johnny Carson and David Letterman....I used to get 500 people a day through my store...I now get less than 20. The restaurant got bought by a person who wanted to get rich quick and immediately opened up more restaurants in other towns and did not keep the high quality, everything from scratch mantra that made the restaurant what it was to begin with. It lost its exclusivity and its quality. I, over the years watched a vibrant small town with 5 antique stores in it die until I was the only one left. Last year, another store moved in but I had already made my decision to sell and only the economy was keeping me from getting out. The other store had a good first few months because it was new and even though they have great stuff, they are suffering from the lack of people coming off the interstate and into our downtown. For the antique business in general, I say that those people who adapt to the new world and utilize the best of both the 'hands on, walk-in' world as well as the internet world will survive and even thrive if and when our economy comes back and people get back to work. Raising the minimum wage would not help either.

What has effected the decline in the price of marbles from what they were even 5 - 10 years ago? Is it all the Economy? Are there other facters? Can you give examples?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/121268490796?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649 Here is the link for the auction for the 'S' oxblood in case anyone is interested.

I think so too. I'm getting ready to put it up on Ebay in a little bit. But I thought it would be a fun one to share. Too bad its not mint. It is more of a near mint or near mint -

This is just for Fun !!! A perfect ego marble for anyone who's name starts with an S !!!! 39/64

Can't you see two eyes, a nose and a mouth?

Anyone ever had a haunted marble? I have had a haunted rocking chair and the ghost actually communicated with me one night. Scared the bejesus out of me!!!! In this picture of my marble is what looks like a face. What do you think? Do you think it would get a rise out of people on Utube? lol

I see what you mean. You can see the back ribbons through the divisions of the front ribbons. Perhaps they mis-identified their marble?

I know, they've always been iffy. The only price guide that was really good was the one he did that cited real auction sales. And then, a lot has changed in the marble world since 1996. Are there any good price guides that have been written lately. I do know of one that is sold as a cyber book and I do like it, and actually bought it, but unfortunately it is on a different laptop that is now dead and I never got around how to figure out how to reload it on this one without having to re-buy it.

I'm counting at least 12 bands but they are hard to count without having the marble in hand. The book describes naked examples with no outer layers as 'very rare'.

If it is, here is what Block says in his Marbles, Identification and Price Guide, 1996 expanded and revised 2nd edition. It says that the more ribbons, the rarer the marble. 6 bands are extremely rare. This looks like it has much more than that. 4 bands are the most common, 3 and 5 come next, and then 6. The book does not mention any more than six so maybe this is not a divided core swirl. Another title is open core swirl.....means the same thing.

It looks like a divided core swirl to me.

Kool.

I have Block's auction prices book. It is an interesting read.

It seems that I have offended someone and for that I apologize. In no way was I trying to 'gain support' for my actions. Mike's messages to me made me feel so 'warm all over good' that I wanted to share them with the people in this community that I respect so much and many of whom, I know would understand, and perhaps, celebrate that 'good feeling' with me. You don't get enough good things happening in a day and when they do, you want to share them. I'm very sorry that my intentions were mis-understood. In no way, was I trying to toot my own horn. I'm sorry it was taken that way and again, I apologize. At the same time I thought that it would be a good opportunity to bring up what I see is sometimes blatent dishonesty from many ebay listers and to try and come up with some sort of a way to fight back. I'm sorry that that back fired. I do understand, now that my enthusiasm has waned a bit, that trying to get ebay to do anything would never work. I do disagree that no one should correct a mistake by an ebay seller unless one has had many, many years in the industry, but by the way, I do. Most of my buying and selling of marbles have been through my own walk-in antiques store, which I have owned for 26 years, but I have been fascinated by marbles for longer than that. I don't think that it is someone's extreme and long lived knowledge that should dictate when and if a mistake on ebay should be brought up to the seller. I myself go by several criteria. If, by studying a person's selling history, I can become reasonably certain that the person is generally trying to describe his items to the best of his or her ability, but that they really don't know much about marbles, then that is a message to me that if I stepped in with advice on their particular mistake and where to go on the internet to learn more about marbles and where to go for help on id'ing the ones that they were not certain of,.....that it might be accepted in the spirit in which it was meant....and usually it is. Several people that I have contacted over the years, still send me pictures now and then, asking for advice. If I can't help, I give them the URL's of several marble forums with good experts that are willing to help, including this one. I use other criteria too, but I don't want to make this too long.

My 1996 edition of Robert Blocks Marbles Identification and Price Guide prices either black or white 2 pontil opaque hand mades as being worth $10 for mint 5/8. $6 for near mint, and down to $3 for good and $1 for only collectible ones. He says that black and white are the most common, blue, pink and green, being more rare, and translucent ones and other colored opaques being more rare yet. He says that the translucent ones are worth 5 times the normal value of an opaque white or black one. I wonder whether that formula is still viable today. If a white opaque is worth a dollar, then a translucent white should be worth $5 and a translucent blue tinged one should be worth even more? That is, if the formula is still viable today. Hopefully it is, but for some reason, my gut is saying it isn't, that prices today, are more complicated than that.

so the two that I have that are a very pale translucent blue might be considered to be melon balls. Thanks, I will do some research on those. Thanks, Vicki

Why not start a new thread? I will if you won't, but the last time I started a new thread, I was mocked for being a newbie and told that I was rocking the boat !!! lol. I can take it though so let me know what you want me to do? Thanks, Vicki