My Son’s Collection HELP!

[CqmnMarble]

To keep my 5 year old son entertained while I shopped antique stores I started him collecting marbles. At first, I would buy any and all that seemed reasonably priced. He is now 8 and spends his money collecting only “special” marbles. I have bought him books on the topic but we are both still complete newbies. Yesterday, he picked up this very old box of marbles at a furniture auction I was attending. These seem to be way older than anything we have come across. At least half appear to be clay. Some maybe stone. I am really not sure. So what am I looking at here? Thanks 

[Ric]

Welcome to The Marble Connection. You have a bunch of different types of Vintage marbles. The wooden box is full of common clays and maybe some stones. The second tub contains mostly brown and blue Bennigtons, but I also see a lined china in there. In the third group there are a variety of Akro Corkscrews, a few Vitros, Marble Kings, West Virginia Swirls, and others. The best marble might be that blue one on the right side with four red/yellow ribbons. That looks to be a Peltier Superboy or Superman. The next bunch is more clays, maybe some stones and a bigger lined china. The next tub is mostly Cat's eyes with a few Vitro Hybrid colored ones, and maybe a Master Marble or two. The last group is game marbles and a couple of purees (the transparent ones). I hope this helps get you started.

If you want better info, you'll need to post fewer marbles at a time so we can more easily refer to them.

There's also an old hand-made German lattice core in with the cat eye's.

[Steph]

That is a pretty cool group of clays.   Nice to have such a range of sizes.  They would be about 90 to 150 years old.     

Same age range on the Benningtons which make up most of the second photo.

Those are some nice old glass marbles in the third photo, mostly from the 1930's.  

The last two pics are mostly more common marbles, but I'm intrigued by the large marble in the second-to-last photo.



I see that Ric has answered while I've been typing my post, but I'll go ahead and hit enter on this post without comparing it to what he wrote.  

[Fire1981]

You are right. Your first and second pictures are clay marbles. Most of them in your group are called Benningtons and were made in Germany

prior to WWI so they are old. Other Members will be able to give you more information on those. You have glass marbles that are very fine examples of different machine made marbles made by different factories here in the U.S.A. and other Members will help you with those as well.

[Fire1981]

Listen to Ric...my post was late

[Fire1981]

And Steph👍

[CqmnMarble]

This is amazing info THANK YOU Ric, Steph and Fire1981. We are jumping to the books now with what you have told us. My son is so excited.