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Rare Blue Core Marble


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Also arrived today a rare blue core marble. The marble is a hair under 15/16 inch. The marble has a core of clear glass, over it is blue glass, than the 4 ribbons, than clear glass again. Jeroen vV told me that if the core was entirely made of blue glass, it would be darker. The pontil is highly faceted. I have never seen such a fine facted pontil before on a marble this size. They did a very fine job. This marble probably date from the very early period of hand making marbles, around 1850.

The only marble I could find to which my marble could possible be compared with is this one: http://www.liveauctioneers.com/item/13086665_2-color-blue-glass-single-naked-ribbon-marble I must say, that I like mine more than that one.
Regards,
Jeroen

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Also arrived today a rare blue core marble. The marble is a hair under 15/16 inch. The marble has a core of clear glass, over it is blue glass, than the 4 ribbons, than clear glass again. Jeroen vV told me that if the core was entirely made of blue glass, it would be darker. The pontil is highly faceted. I have never seen such a fine facted pontil before on a marble this size. They did a very fine job. This marble probably date from the very early period of hand making marbles, around 1850.

No need to speculate on the age of the marble (do you have any evidence it was not made in say 1875 or 1895?).

The core could be entirely transparent blue. A light blue. There are many transparent colored glass marbles that are not very dark.

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Ask Idigjars to post his

I think I gave him one as a Birthday gift that looks like yours.

I just called it a Jelly core and sent it on ;)

Yes, you probably have buckets full of this kind of marble. Everything I post is normal in your eyes, or not special. You must have an amazing collection.

Well if this is not a RARE marble...... Can anyone post a picture of a similar marble?

And if someone is interested in buying or trade this blue core marble, just let me know.

Jeroen

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No need to speculate on the age of the marble (do you have any evidence it was not made in say 1875 or 1895?).

The core could be entirely transparent blue. A light blue. There are many transparent colored glass marbles that are not very dark.

Hi Hansel,

No evidence, just a feeling I have. Perhaps we can call it pontil evolution. The old single pontil transitional marbles, all have very smooth faceted pontils. At least all the transitionals I have seen have very nice finished pontills. Sometimes they are hard to find. I think in the early times these transitional marbles had to compete with the handmade agate marbles. Those marbles have an entirely smooth surface. The marble makers probably told the people on the large grounding wheels to make the rough pontils very smooth. I do have several handmade marbles with facted pontils (mostly smaller ones) that have facted pontil with only one or two facets. As if they only pushed the rough pontil one of two times against the grounding wheel. Often some of the roughness remains. Perhaps this quick finish was done, because the competition between the glass marble makers became stronger, and the marbles had to produced cheaper. When they in the end had to compete with the first machine made marbles, the glass marble makers did not ground the rough pontills any more. It was too expensive.

Now this is of course just all speculative what I write here, but in my opinion it makes sense. So why do I think my blue core marble is of the early period? The first transitional marbles I had to compete with the hand faceted agate marbles. The appearance of these marbles resembles the agate marbles. Because glass could be formed into much more variety, I think they started to experiment with new designs. The blue core marble comes from England, and a lot of strange marbles comes from England. I believe the Germans started to export their marbles to England before the USA. The faceted pontil on my blue core marble is made of many facets. I think I can count about 15 or so. Non of the original roughness is left. I have several large handmade marbles with faceted pontils, but still some roughness is visible.

So this is why I think my blue core marble is from the very first period of hand making glass marbles, after the invention of the marble scissors in 1850? (1849)

Of course this is all speculative, but I think that my thinking has some logic in it. I would love to hear other ideas or suggestions. For sure I am not the only one who ever thought this over.

I also think that mica panel onionskins have evolved from blizzard mica onionskins. Why? There is often so many mica that the colored glass is hardly visible. To create panels makes the core visible, and the marble gets more attractive. Again just a though from me.

Jeroen

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Very nice marble Jeroen, and indeed very rare, seeing some reactions, there are collectors who would be very glad to have one of these kind of marbles too. But even if you think you've got every marble in youre collection and you know everything about it, you might be wrong, isn't it?

Cees

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We all like to learn but it is when speculation is worded in a factual way that problems can arise. I believe they were putting some nicely polished pontils on some handmade marbles under an inch, up to and maybe after the turn of the century. I am positive they were still doing it much later on large marbles and Sulphides.

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I think they were putting the nice faceted/finished pontils on only ones they felt were extra nice. Regardless of size.They may have started out doing faceted on early marbles but evolved to only give faceted to the special ones. I have a couple really nice, above average small onions that are faceted. Small as in 5/8-11/16"

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Hi Clyde,

I think there are many very nice lutz marbles, but I can't remember ever seen one with a faceted pontil. So I don't think they kept putting facted pontil on special marbles all to the end. No facted pontils on joseph coats and clambrots also, as far as I have seen.

But it might be different with the facted pontils than what I think of course.

Jeroen

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