Marble Terminology

[cat's eye jack]

i have been wanting to ask this question for some time now, so here goes. how and when did the phrase "shooter size" marbles begin? i played a lot of marbles in my younger days and was quite good, but no way did i ever use a 1" marble as my shooter. back then (prehistoric) the good players used agates 5/8" or a tad larger because they would stick after knocking out a marble and stay in place for the next shot. well, after reading this it sounds like a question some dumb old fool would ask, but what the heck. thanks jack

[Steph]

Fab question Jack!

[Steph]

The largest allowed in all the tournaments I remember reading about has been 3/4". However, Vitro labelled their bags of larger marbles "shooters" in the 1938 ad below. In the 1950's they had packages called "Shooters" which contained marbles as small as 11/16" and as large as 1". (If the Shooters packaging ever contained marbles smaller than 11/16", I'm not aware of it, but I won't say they didn't.)

However, in the 1950's Marble King's idea of shooters was more in line with yours. Sometimes MK's shooters were very close to average size.

[lstmmrbls]

anything bigger than 3/4" will always be a boulder to me.

[cat's eye jack]

The largest allowed in all the tournaments I remember reading about has been 3/4". However, Vitro labelled their bags of larger marbles "shooters" in the 1938 ad below. In the 1950's they had packages called "Shooters" which contained marbles as small as 11/16" and as large as 1". (If the Shooters packaging ever contained marbles smaller than 11/16", I'm not aware of it, but I won't say they didn't.)

However, in the 1950's Marble King's idea of shooters was more in line with yours. Sometimes MK's shooters were very close to average size.

thanks very much steph for answering my question.....jack

[ann]

anything bigger than 3/4" will always be a boulder to me.

Me too. Although I grew up in eastern North Carolina, and sometimes we also called them "klognockers." [or clognockers? or klognokkers? or . . .] Have no idea where that term came from.

Ann

[Poplarhead]

Galen, we always called them boulders too. Never used for playing in rings, just a chase game occasionally. We also called them logrollers (which maybe a throwback to "lag roller" used for lagging to line to see who goes first maybe?

Don

[zaboo]

yep 'bolders' here too... isn't it funny the different names from different areas?

my mom was amarble champ when she was in grade school (she's 90 now) and she called the marble she won with 'the shooter'. so I am wondering if kids here called them shooters for that reason?

[lstmmrbls]

I lived just outside Akron in my marble playing days. We didn't use the boulders for anything I can remember. Maybe seeing how far they would bounce or fly(LOL).

[1DanS]

Agree with the 3/4" or less for Shooters.

I do recall using Boulders in a game called "Dropseys"(not sure of the spelling though). You stood above the ring and dropped the larger marbles onto the smaller marbles in the ring. If you hit them at just the right angle, you could knock them outta the ring. Of course the ring was smaller than in a normal game of mibs.

Funny how I can remember that from way back when and now I sometimes can't remember what I had for lunch yesterday.

thanks.

[bigtee0]

yup boulders, dropseys is how the marbles got chunked, shooters was your favorite one to shoot with cause you could win with it. the the rest is any way they could sell em. i lost all mine.