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Are Not Quite Round Marbles More Or Less Collectible?


sclsu

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I am sorting through my recent acquisitions and I have found several marbles that seem to be not quite round, like oblong or slightly flattened. I personally think they are less collectible for me, but I'm wondering what other people think.

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Good point.

Some errors could add value.


And on the most common marbles, finding one out of round could possible turn a marble which is worth a nickle into one which is worth $1 or more. A football shaped cateye might possibly be worth more than average.


Some people collect egg-shaped marbles and other oddballs. I think mostly for fun, not value. However, you might be able to get money for them if you market them cleverly.

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That's another good question.

Here are some variations on the real-word definition of cullet.

Scraps of broken or waste glass gathered for remelting, especially with new material.

Waste glass for melting down to be reused.

Broken or waste glass suitable for remelting.

Perhaps variant of collet (literally: little neck, referring to the glass neck of newly blown bottles, etc).

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/cullet

So when you see glass companies with piles of glass to be recycled into marbles, that's definitely cullet.

But marble collectors sometimes have slightly different definitions, so we call the big chunks of glass found at marble factory sites "cullet" even if the chunks might never have been intended to be reused.

And I have a lot of jars of out-of-round and broken Jabos which I have labelled as cullet. And now that you ask I'm not sure if I was correct to do so, but that's how I thought of them at the time.

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I don't think out-of-round counts quite so much in the old German handmades.

That said, what everybody else said ^^^ up there.

I personally like marbles with accidental "stuff" in them. And deliberately have a couple examples of marbles with a flat side that got by quality control (a sparkler, but not as good as Steph's! and an interestingly flat-sided ribbon lutz swirl).

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For years I have been adding to my assorment of marbles that for one reason or another are not quite round. Many of my rogues have been selected for their distinctive - identifiable colors and patterns. Descriptive tags on these "odd balls" incllude: marble machine dodo, drips. bumbbells, donuts, spaghetti marbles that have either gone through the rollers or not, footballs, overshots and various combinations of those and more.

None of these "errors" are extremely valuable, most were dug -- but they are still eye catchers -- especially at marble shows for the bored tagalong wife or tired children.

Big Indian

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