Snot Agates In The 1930's ...

[Steph]

A 1935 definition of Snot Agate calls it "a glass agate of any color streaked with white". (source)

In 1932, you could buy a bag of 38 snot agates for 10 cents. If I understand correctly those are gobfed marble prices, and thus the marbles would not have been Christensens.

The 38 marbles in a bag makes me wonder if these could have been marbles jobbered by Rosenthal. Why? Because the other time I remember seeing a bag with 38 marbles in it was Berry Pink's double compartment bag.

And then that makes me wonder if the marbles might have been made by Alley. With Berry being an executive with both Alley and Rosenthal in 1932 and with Alley not selling his own branded bags, I wonder if Berry might have distributed the marbles through Rosenthal?

Does anyone know?

[bigtee0]

A 1935 definition of Snot Agate calls it "a glass agate of any color streaked with white". (source)

In 1932, you could buy a bag of 38 snot agates for 10 cents. If I understand correctly those are gobfed marble prices, and thus the marbles would not have been Christensens.

The 38 marbles in a bag makes me wonder if these could have been marbles jobbered by Rosenthal. Why? Because the other time I remember seeing a bag with 38 marbles in it was Berry Pink's double compartment bag.

And then that makes me wonder if the marbles might have been made by Alley. With Berry being an executive with both Alley and Rosenthal in 1932 and with Alley not selling his own branded bags, I wonder if Berry might have distributed the marbles through Rosenthal?

Does anyone know?

do you suppose we could find another more refined name for that marble? i think i'd puke everytime i picked it up. that is a disgusting name. as bad as catfish's avatar. Marie

[wvrons]

Very interesting. There may be something here.

[catfish]

What the heck is wrong with my avatar?

[david Chamberlain]

Couldn't help gagging myself but then I've been known to describe the interior of a marble as having a

'Mucous Matrix.' David Chamberlain

[bumblebee]

My slags have all become snot-agates thanks to this great little article from The Yale Democrat (Yale, Oklahoma), 24 Mar 1920:

 

[I'llhavethat1]

Wow, that's some deep digging.

Some of the key things I picked out, was "seventy-five cents to a dollar" , per marble,  was a substantial nugget of coin back in that era.

 

[Steph]

3 hours ago, bumblebee said:

My slags have all become snot-agates thanks to this great little article from The Yale Democrat (Yale, Oklahoma), 24 Mar 1920:

Ha!  Love it.  


I _think_ there might also have been a stone version called snot agate.  I can't currently point you to where I got that idea, but somewhere loosely in my mind is a memory of seeing a newspaper article  from no later than 1905 which referenced snot agates. 

But of course I could be completely making that up!  

[bumblebee]

2 hours ago, Steph said:

Ha!  Love it.  


I _think_ there might also have been a stone version called snot agate.  I can't currently point you to where I got that idea, but somewhere loosely in my mind is a memory of seeing a newspaper article  from no later than 1905 which referenced snot agates. 

But of course I could be completely making that up!  

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:

 

[Steph]

There was a time when I was downloading things so quickly that I didn't even take the time to put keywords on the links. "I'll sort those later."  

And then came the time when my antique computer stopped indexing, so I couldn't even search for the downloads that I _had_ put keywords on.  

And then came multiple generations of back-ups on small-capacity disks.  

And now that computer that I was on at the time is hidden away in a corner. 

So ... all I have is the fuzzy memory.   And it's possible that it was from some kind of nostalgic article such as you mention -- so maybe I classified it as fuzzy from the start because I was trying to make an estimate such as you did about what nostalgic point in time the person might have been referring to.