Tell Us About The One That Got Away

[Killermarbles]

There are some great marble stories out there.

[JVVmarbles]

About 10 years ago there was a painted lion sulphide in yellow glass (the only painted figure inside colored glass sulphide I've ever seen) at an antique fair here in Holland...the seller wanted 900 euro for it (about $1150)...at that time I was not used to paying so much money for a marble, so I did not buy it...I still regret it. It was in near mint+ condition, so a REAL bargain at that price!!!

[Steph]

I have small treasures and small regrets. I had a number of Master Cloudys which are very plain marbles but kinda hard to come by ... but I didn't know what they were and I sold them for a pittance. They probably weren't worth more than a pittance, lol, but if I had known what they were and how hard they are to find, I would have saved them.

[Mike]

About fifteen or so years ago, I stopped into an antique store in Powell, OH which is just a little north of Columbus. The owner asked if he could help and was I looking for anything in particular? I said toy marbles and he said he didn't have anything good at the time as he had no Sulphides, handmades and nothing with pontils. Told him I just like common machine mades with some color and anything from the 30's to the 60's was just fine with me. He said that he had a big cake tin under the counter with marbles but they were not worth anything. He had picked up about 20 of those round Ford gumball machines and was putting a few handfulls of marbles in the gumball machines as they displayed better and sold faster. I asked if I might look at the marbles, picked out about 10 or so and asked if he would sell them to me as they were pretty colorful and some had some great patterns. He shot me a price, I did not even bother to ask him to go lower paid him and walked out. I think it was $7.00 or so and he even gave me a few extras as he was out of stock on the good marbles. I thought I might have some OK stuff but was somewhat new to marbles and wanted to check Block's Marble Mania book. A few weeks went by before I got serious about ID'ing them. Turns out I had a handful of mostly Christensens and one was a three color flame with many points. I knew nothing of the internet and consigned it to Bob Block who sold it for over $300. I later sold some others at shows for a total of another $100 plus or so. I went back to the shop and trid to buy what was left of the marbles in the cake tin but he had used them all to sell the gumball machines. Somewhere, all around us are gumball machines that may have great marbles in them and the people that bought them probably have no clue as to what they have as they were in it for the machines and not the marbles. Probably threw the marbles out and replaced them with gumballs in the playroom for the grandchildren to get. Go figure!

That's my story and I am sticking to it!

Mike