Questions about the Master Marbles and misc that I bought in on my trip to Buenos Aires.

TootlesMarbles · 2025-07-22T23:45:03Z

I recently had a business trip to Buenos Aires, Argentina, in South America, and on the last couple days of my trip, I had my business partner's mother direct us to the antique/thrift area of the city. There, in an alley pavilion with hardly a roof put over it, I managed to find some marbles in South America. I have been on the hunt for unique marble collections for the last ten years, after discovering their art and historic value, I have been fascinated to find many marble collections over time. This one though, is very unusual to me, since I found it in Argentina, and it seems to be a very old.

I believe these are mostly Master Marbles from the 1930s. I found them in an old Van Cleef & Arpels Paris box, with a purple felt-lined jewelry box inside, with some marbles that had already been sorted. Bedded beneath the box, was a loose-marble collection of various tyles, swirls and slags, I only barely sorted them in zip-lock bags, but the photos I am sharing is of the unpicked collection, I only cleaned some of the mud and dust from the marbles. I think there might be value selling this as a collection, rather than one marble at a time, so I am showing you a 'raw' find, I haven't picked through this collection at all, it's just sorted and cleaned, and I'm wondering if there might be a story behind how all these amazing marbles managed to get down to Buenos Aires.

I took some photos, under normal and UV light. The marbles in the jewelry box are highly reactive, the slags and swirls in the zip-lock bags not-so-much, but I plan on taking more photos soon. I would love to know more about these marbles, to perhaps preserve them as a collection, before I might star selling them individually? Thank you for your feedback, I will wait a while to make an educated decision about the collection . . . I might need to pay for another trip to Buenos Aires soon though, so let me know. Chao!