Marble (toy)

A collection of marbles

A variety of types and sizes of marble

A marble' is a small spherical toy usually made from glass, clay, steel, plastic or agate. These balls vary in size. Most commonly, they are about 1/2 inch to 1 inch (1.3 to 2.54 cm) in diameter, but they may range from less than 1/30 inch (0.111 cm) to over 3 inches (7.75 cm), while some art glass marbles for display purposes are over 12 inches (30 cm) wide. Marbles can be used for a variety of games called marbles. They are often collected, both for nostalgia and for their aesthetic colors. In the North of England the objects and the game are called "taws", with larger taws being called bottle washers after the use of a marble in Codd-neck bottles.

History

Various balls of stone were found on excavation near Mohenjo-daro.^{[citation needed]} Marbles are also often mentioned in Roman literature, and there are many examples of marbles from ancient Egypt. They were commonly made of clay, stone or glass.

Marbles were first made in Germany in the 1800s. The game has become popular throughout the US and other countries.^[1]

Ceramic marbles entered inexpensive mass production in the 1870s.

A German glassblower invented marble scissors in 1846, a device for making marbles.^[2] The first mass-produced toy marbles (clay) made in the U.S. were made in Akron, Ohio, by S. C. Dyke, in the early 1890s. Some of the first U.S.-produced glass marbles were also made in Akron, by James Harvey Leighton. In 1903, Martin Frederick Christensen—also of Akron, Ohio—made the first machine-made glass marbles on his patented machine. His company, The M. F. Christensen & Son Co., manufactured millions of toy and industrial glass marbles until they ceased operations in 1917. The next U.S. company to enter the glass marble market was Akron Agate. This company was started by Akronites in 1911, but was located in Clarksburg, West Virginia. Today, there are only two American-based toy marble manufacturers: Jabo Vitro in Reno, Ohio, and Marble King, in Paden City, West Virginia.

Marbles games

Marbles from Indonesia

Various games can be played with marbles; any such game can itself be called "marbles" (cf. darts, skittles, bowls).

No 'hits' on other marbles were accounted to any player until (s)he had successfully played his/her own marble into the bunny hole.

"Firing" a marble meant that a player had to flick his/her marble from a stationary position of his hand. No part of the hand firing the marble was permitted to be in front of the position where the marble had been resting on the ground. Using that hand, (s)he would flick or fire the marble from his/her hand, usually with the knuckle on the back of his/her hand resting on the ground, and usually using the thumb of that hand to do so. All shots of the game were conducted in this manner throughout except the very initial pitch towards the bunny hole that commenced the game.

Once a player was able to land his/her marble within the hole, (s)he would immediately then fire his marble at his opponents' marbles. However, if any player hit another player's marble before his/her own marble had been to 'visit' the bunny hole, the act would be referred to as "a kiss"; the game would be over, and all or both players (in the case of two players only) would have to retreat back to the starting line to re-commence the game, without result. This, of course, could be quite annoying or frustrating if a player had already built up quite a few hits on another player's marble! So, most skilled players did not resort to this kind of tactic.

The overall aim was to hit a particular marble 3 times after getting into the hole, then you had to "run away", before the final contact shot was allowed to be played - which was called "the kill". Once a player made a kill on another marble, if the game was 'for keeps', (s)he would then get to keep the marble [bunny] (s)he had 'killed'. The format of playing this game was that each time you successfully hit another player's marble, you were to have another shot - even if it was not the marble you had originally intended to hit.

Of course, the ploy was to hit the particular opponent marble 3 times, and then 'run away' to the bunny hole, because once you rested the marble into the hole, you immediately had your shot again, thus leaving no opportunity at all for your opponent to retreat his/her marble before "the Kill" was made on it.

In the Australian school yard there were three common sizes of marbles. The smallest and most common, about 15mm in diameter, was simply called "a marble". The two larger, and more valuable sizes were referred to as Semi-Bowlers and Tom-Bowlers, being about 20mm and 25mm in diameter respectively. Semi-Bowlers accounted for about 2% of all marbles seen and Tom-Bowlers, about 0.5%. They were used in much the same way as ordinary marbles, although players of some games would not admit them because of the advantage of their larger mass and inertia. Often owner's of these larger sizes were reticent to use them in games for fear of losing them to another player as "keepsies". They were usually the of clear "cat's eye" or milk glass type, just bigger.

World championship

The British and World Marbles Championship has been held at Tinsley Green, West Sussex, England, every year since 1932.^[3][4][5] (Marbles has been played in Tinsley Green and the surrounding area for many centuries:^[3][6] TIME magazine traces its origins to 1588.^[7]) Traditionally, the marbles-playing season started on Ash Wednesday and lasted until midday on Good Friday: playing after that brought bad luck.^[4] More than 20 teams from around the world take part in the championship, each Good Friday; German teams have been successful several times since 2000,^[3][6][8] although local teams from Crawley, Copthorne and other Sussex and Surrey villages often take part as well;^[3][7][9] the first championship in 1932 was won by Ellen Geary, a young girl from London.

Marble terminology

• "Knuckle down", the position adopted at the start line at the beginning of a match. You begin with your knuckle against the ground.
• "Quitsies": Allows any opponent to stop the game without consequence. You can either have "quitsies" (able to quit) or "no quitsies".
• "Keepsies" (or "for keeps"): The player keeps all the marbles he or she wins.
• "Elephant Stomps": When called, it allows a player to stomp his/her marble level with the ground surface, making it very difficult for other players to hit the marble.
• "Bombies": When called, it allows a player to take 1-2 steps while holding his/her marble and normally closing one eye will line up over one of the opponents marble and drop the marble trying to hit the marble on the ground.
• "Leaning Tops": When called, a shooter leans in on his/her off hand for leverage over an indentation on any type of surface or obstacle.
• A "taw" or "shooter" is generally a larger marble used to shoot with, and "ducks" are marbles to be shot at.
• Various names refer to the marbles' size. Any marble larger than the majority may be termed a boulder, bonker, masher, plumper, popper, shooter, thumper, smasher, taw, bumbo, crock, bumboozer, bowler, tonk, tronk, godfather, tom bowler, fourer, giant, dobber, dobbert, or Biggie. A marble smaller than the majority is a peawee/peewee or mini. A "grandfather" is the largest marble, the size of a billiards ball or tennis ball.
• Various names for different marble types (regional playground talk, Leicester, UK): Marleys (Marbles), Prit (white marble), Kong (large marble), King Kong (larger than a Bosser), Steely (Metal Ball-bearing). Names can be combined: e.g. Prit-Kong (large white marble). There are many more such names, as discussed in the next section.

Types of marbles

• Aggie - made of agate (aggie is short for agate) or glass resembling agate, with various patterns like in the alley
• Alley or real - made of marble or alabaster (alley is short for alabaster), streaked with wavy or other patterns with exotic names like corkscrew, spiral, snake, ribbon, onyx, swirl, bumblebee, butterfly, and...
  

  An orange and white toothpaste marble
  • Ade - strands of opaque white and color, making lemon-ade, lime-ade, orange-ade, etc.
  • Cat's Eye or catseye - central eye-shaped colored inserts or cores (injected inside the marble)
    • Beachball - three colors and six vanes
    • Devil's Eye - red with yellow eye
  • Clambroth - equally spaced opaque lines on a milk-white opaque base. Rare clams can have blue or black base glass. Medium-high value for antique marbles; rare base color valued much higher.
  • Lutz - antique, handmade German swirl, containing bands of fine copper flakes that glitter like gold. Erroneously thought to have been invented by noted glassmaker Nicholas Lutz. Medium-high value for antique marbles, depending on specific sub-type of Lutz design.
  • Oilie or Oily - Opaque with a rainbow, iridescent finish
  • Onionskin - antique, handmade German swirl, with many closely packed surface streaks. Medium price range for antique marbles.
  • Opaque - a rather uninteresting marble, but popular. Comes in many colors.
  • Oxblood - a streaky patch resembling blood
  • Pearls - Opaque with single color with "mother of pearl" finish
  • Toothpaste - Also known as "Plainsies" in Canada. Wavy streaks usually with red, blue, black, white, orange.
  • Turtle - wavy streaks containing green and yellow
• Bumblebee - modern, machine-made marble; mostly yellow with two black strips on each side.
• China - glazed porcelain, with various patterns similar to an alley marble. Geometric patterns have low value; flowers or other identifiable objects can command high prices.
  • Plaster - a form of china that is unglazed
• Commie or common - made of clay; natural color or monochrome coloration. Made in huge quantities during 19th and early 20th centuries. Common, not very attractive; thus almost no value.
  • Bennington - clay fired in a kiln with salt glaze -- usually brown, often blue. Other colorations fairly scarce. Fairly low value.
  • Crock - made from crockery (earthenware) clay
• Croton alley or Jasper - glazed and unglazed china marbled with blue
• Crystal or clearie or purie - any clear colored glass - including "opals," "glimmers," "bloods," "rubies," etc. These can have any number of descriptive names such as "deep blue sea", "blue moon", "green ghost", "brass bottle".
  • Princess - a tinted crystal
  • Galaxy - modern, machine-made marble; lots of dots inserted to look like like a sky of stars
• Indian - antique, handmade German marble; dark and opaque, usually black, with overlaid groups of color bands; usually white, and one or more other colors. Can also have many colors like blue, green and scarlet. Medium price range for antique marbles.
• Mica - antique, handmade German marble; glassy to translucent with streaks or patches of mica, ranging from clear to misty. Value depends on glass color.
• Steely - made of steel; a true steely (not just a ball-bearing) was made from a flat piece of steel folded into a sphere and shows a cross where the corners all come together.
• Sulphide - antique, handmade German marble; large (1.25 to 3+ inch) clear glass sphere with a small statuette or figure inside. Most common are domesticated animals such as dogs, cats, cows, etc.; then wild animals; human figures are scarce; inanimate objects such as a train or pocket watch are very rare and command high prices. The interior figures are made of white clay or kaolin, and appear a silvery color due to light refraction. A sulphide with a colored-glass sphere, or with a painted figure inside, is also very rare and brings a high price. Like other types of antique marbles, sulphides have been reproduced and faked in large quantities.
• Swirly - is a common marble made out of glass with one swirly color.
• Tiger- Clear with orange/ yellow stripes

Marble collecting

Some historic marbles

Marble players often grow to collect marbles after having outgrown the game. Marbles are categorized by many factors including condition, size, type, manufacturer/artisan, age, style, materials, scarcity, and the existence of original packaging (which is further rated in terms of condition). A marble's worth is primarily determined by type, size, condition and eye-appeal, coupled with the law of supply and demand. Ugly, but rare marbles may be valued as much as those of very fine quality. However, this is the exception, rather than the rule - "Condition is King" when it comes to marbles. Any surface damage (characterized by missing glass, such as chips or pits) typically cut book value by 50% or more.

Due to the large market, there are many related side businesses that have sprung up such as numerous books and guides, web sites dedicated to live auctions of marbles only, and collector conventions. Additionally, many glass artisans produce art marbles for the collectors' market only, with some selling for hundreds of dollars.^{[citation needed]}.

Manufacture

Glass marbles

Marbles are made using many techniques. They can be categorized into two general types: hand-made and machine-made.

Marbles were originally made by hand. Stone or ivory marbles can be fashioned by grinding. Clay, pottery, ceramic, or porcelain marbles can be made by rolling the material into a ball, and then letting dry, or firing, and then can be left natural, painted, or glazed. Clay marbles, also known as crock marbles or commies (common), are made of slightly porous clay, traditionally from local clay or leftover earthenware ("crockery"), rolled into balls, then glazed and fired at low heat, creating an opaque imperfect sphere that is frequently sold as the poor boy's "old timey" marble. Glass marbles can be fashioned through the production of glass rods which are stacked together to form the desired pattern, cutting the rod into marble-sized pieces using marble scissors, and rounding the still-malleable glass.

One mechanical technique is dropping globules of molten glass into a groove made by two interlocking parallel screws. As the screws rotate, the marble travels along them, gradually being shaped into a sphere as it cools. Color is added to the main batch glass and/or to additional glass streams that are combined with the main stream in a variety of ways. For example, in the "cat's-eye" style, colored glass veins are injected into a transparent main stream. Applying more expensive colored glass to the surface of cheaper transparent or white glass is also a common technique.

Manufacturing locations

There were a lot of businesses that made marbles in Ohio.^[10] One major marble manufacturing company is Marble King, located in Paden City, West Virginia, which was featured in the television shows Made in America, Some Assembly Required and The Colbert Report. Currently, the world's largest manufacturer of playing marbles is Vacor de Mexico. The company makes 90 percent of the world’s marbles. Over 12 million are produced daily.

Art marbles

Collectible contemporary marbles are made mostly in the United States by individual artists.

Art marbles are high quality collectable marbles arising out of the art glass movement. They are sometimes referred to as contemporary glass marbles to differentiate them from collectible antique marbles, and are spherical works of art glass. Contemporary glass artists are making some spectacularly beautiful marbles, and collectors are snatching them up, especially oversized pieces that can be displayed easily.

Other contemporary marble artists include Richard C. Hollingshead II, Kevin Ivey, Sabina Boehm, Ro Purser, Chris Juedeman, Mark Matthews, Josh Simpson, Zach Jorgenson, Douglas Ferguson, Josh Sable, Gateson Recko, James Alloway, Geoffrey Beetem, Drew Fritts, Chris Rice, Travis Weber, Aaron Slater, Andrew Groner, Mike Edmondson, Bryan Chaille, Andy & Sara Gregorich, David Salazar, Jesse Demoss, Kevin Nail, Mike Gong, Nathan Miers, Jason McGhee, Paul Katherman, Ben Barracas, John Kobuki, J.D. Anderson, Chad Trent, Ken "Spider" Schneidereit, John Bridges, George Pavliscak, Matt & Misha Gieseler, Scott Young, Brad Brandolino, Jeff Mentuck, Stephan Hagstrom and Ray Laubs.

Games

Video games

• Marble Blast Gold (2003), a "get to the finish" first person game for the PC and Xbox; a sequel, Marble Blast Ultra (2006), was released later for the Xbox 360
• Marble Drop (1997), a computer game wherein players place marbles in a complicated apparatus in an attempt to solve a puzzle.
• Marble Madness (1984), an Atari game wherein players race each other to the finish line.
• Oxyd (1991), a game for Amiga, Atari ST, and Macintosh
• Switchball (2007), a game for the PC and Xbox 360
• The World Ends with You, an action role-playing game that uses a marble-like system called "Tin Pin Slammer" as the basis for several plot events but requires the use of pins instead of marbles. The original Japanese name for this minigame is "Marble Slash".

Other

• Abalone (board game), a board game in whiche white and black marbles try to knock each other into a gutter that lines the outside of the board
• B-Daman, a toy that fires marbles and can be played under several game rules
• Bakugan Battle Brawlers, a game which uses magnetic spring loading marbles which open up to reveal creatures used to play the game
• Chinese checkers, often called "Marble Checkers", a board game for two to six players using marbles as game pieces
• Hungry Hungry Hippos, a tabletop game for two to four players involving marbles
• Ker-Plunk, a game for two to four players involving marbles.
• Tock, also known as Tuck, is a cards/board game in which players race their four marbles (or tokens) around the board, with the objective being to be the first to take all of one's marbles "home".

See also

• Cherokee marbles
• Croquet

References

Further reading

• Baumann, Paul. Collecting Antique Marbles (4th ed.). 

External links

• World Marbles Federation
• Associated Press (January 4, 2014). "Marbles that belonged to Anne Frank rediscovered". MSN.com. 

AP 6 hr ago | By Associated Press