There’s plenty of debate surrounding exactly where the marble originated, but one thing is certain – whether you’re 8 or 80, these tiny toys still seem to amaze us.

Game of the pharaohs

Though games of marbles have been played for at least 3,000 years (Egypt’s boy pharaoh King Tutankhamen was even buried with his), we at least know that the name “marble” came from Nurem-berg, Germany, in the early 16th century. In those days, marbles were made primarily of stone like agate or limestone (and, wonder of wonders, even marble itself). Ceramic marbles began to be mass produced in the late 19th century.
Around that time, glass, too, was being handcrafted into marbles, and we can also credit the Germans with the invention of marble scissors (“The orb began at the end of a rod of semi-molten glass, and after a blob was formed, those special scissors sliced it off,” according to The Art of Toys website). The first glass marbles made by machine rolled off the line in 1903.

“Glass marbles quickly dominated the market, particularly after industrial mach-ines made them more efficiently, lowering the price,” according to the Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, NY. “Valued as much for their beauty as the games played with them, marbles inspired one 19th-century enthusiast to describe the ‘twisted spiral of colored filament’ in glass marbles as ‘thin music translated into colored glass.’”

Marbles made by machine

Handmade marbles began to be produced in smaller quantities as machine-made marbles began to dominate the market.

“American companies like Akro, Agate, Peltier Glass and Master Made Marbles began to really churn them out. They were made out of all sorts of materials: baked clay, glass, steel, plastic, onyx, and agate,” according to The Art of Toys. “The machines also meant better shooting marbles, because there were no nicks or misshapes like there were with the handmades. Their names were based on a marble’s particular use (a Shooter, for instance), the material it was made of (Steelies from steel, Allys from alabaster), or its appearance (Flints, Cloudies, Corkscrews, Peerless Patches, etc.).”

The Cat’s (Eye) meow

One of the most popular types of marbles, the Cat’s Eye, were first made in Japan in the years immediately following World War II and soared in popularity throughout the 1950s and ‘60s (In the 1970s, during the arts and crafts movement, handmade marbles became popular once more). Cat’s Eyes are marbles that contain eye-shaped colored cores that have been injected into the inside of the marble.

“Cat’s Eyes have been so much a predominant marble in more recent decades that many people not versed in marble jargon refer to most any marble generically as a Cat’s Eye,” David Chamber-lain of West Virginia’s American Museum of Glass writes in a post on the museum’s blog. “I’ve heard this over and over again, hundreds of times out there in non-marble venues shops, antique and collectible shows, and flea markets. I like to refer to it as being in the marble trenches! And 80 percent of those people when mentioning Cat’s Eyes do so with great affection.”

Though many glass marble companies hit the market beginning in the early 1900s, only one exists today in the U.S. – Marble King, based in West Virginia.

Discerning the old from the new

Like most all other vintage toys, marbles have a loyal following of collectors (In cyberspace, one of the largest marble collectors groups boasts 27,000 members, while another, Marble Show Mania, features listings for marble shows across the world. One of the most recent took place late last month in Decatur, IL.

These collectors, of course, take into consideration a multitude of factors when adding to their collection. Type, size, and condition are the most highly considered factors when appraising a marble. Surface damage such as chipped areas significantly lower the piece’s value. Websites such as marblebuyer.com appraises marbles and offers advice on identifying modern versus vintage pieces as well.

Early machine-made marbles include faint seams where the molten glass joined together. Other identifiers of older machine-mades are color layering (color blends made by feeding separate glass streams into the mach-ines), surface quality (early machine-made marbles are smooth and glossy), and pattern signatures (swirls and twists may help identify the company or maker).

Common modern or toy marbles are made of uniform glass without layers, the colors are bright and even, they are smooth and perfect and will lack the bubbles you would find in handmade pieces. Handmade marbles, meanwhile, have pontil marks (small rough spots made when the the marble was formed at the end of a glass rod and detached while molten), contain subtle imperfections, and contain tiny air bubbles, faint ripples, or layered glass.
For more information about the history of marbles or the process for making handmade marbles, call the Moon Marble Co. at 913-441-1432 or visit www.moonmarble.com.