Marble Fun

Every marble collector that we know has at least a handful of Alley Agate swirl marbles. Over the years we have found it a bit harder to find Alley glassware, especially children’s ware, although it is out there if you look hard enough.  Do you also collect Alley Agate animals and those clear glass radio antenna strain relief … [Read more...] about Fun With Larry Alley’s Menagerie

We're providing you with some of the best museum resources that we've found along the way. Each of these museums contributed to our book, The Secret Life of Marbles.The Museum of American Glass in West VirginiaThe staff at the Museum of American Glass in West Virginia have been, without exception, extremely supportive of our work.  … [Read more...] about Museum and Other Resources

“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.” - Albert EinsteinAll or NothingIs nothing something?  Does nothing mean something?  These two questions have served as the basis for study and debate, including at the post-graduate level, for millennia.  Scholars in both philosophy and physics carry on the study, and … [Read more...] about How are Marbles & Civil War Prison Art Connected?

Bammy-douzler?As you may well imagine the phrase “bobby dazzler” is much older than it’s recent use on Oak Island.  The phrase is known in Australia, but it’s origin can be traced to the mid-19th century in northern England.  The meaning of the first part of the phrase is unknown. The second word is from the verb “dazzle”,  as in … [Read more...] about Bobby Dazzlers! Marbles Used in Jewelry

Anyone live near to the water where the mudlarks build their bowl-like nests of soft mud and then line them with feathers?  Sometimes called Pee Wees, mudlarks are fairly large black and white flycatchers which are called Magpie-larks in Australia.We have no idea when or by whom the mudlark name was first applied to paupers in … [Read more...] about Mudlarking Marbles!

Rats! Foiled Again. We recently asked any visitor to the Blog “Rats and Knuckle Down” if they had ever seen the sculpture, casting, marble collectable, or whatever it is of two rats knuckled down to a game of marbles.  Well, that figurine remains a big mystery because no one has responded. Yet. In the Rat Blog we also made … [Read more...] about More Marble Collectables

We have no idea if rats can knuckle down.  In fact, we have no idea whether or not rats even have knuckles; at least not in the traditional use of the noun today. We do know that rats have a collapsible skeleton and can get through seemingly impossibly small holes. We have first-hand experience of rats gnawing through a cement … [Read more...] about Rats and “Knuckle Down”

For years we have collected hand-held or table top plunger, flipper, and flip or free-roll marble games.  Some people just call them pinball games.  We collect the games with marbles and not the ones which use steel balls.  A later game that we bought was so big that it had legs to the floor!  We lost that one in a flood after … [Read more...] about Bagatelle Blues

Grab the Marbles & Run!We really like marble bags!  It wasn’t so long ago that young ‘uns for whom marbles was a game of keeps needed a bag, pouch, or their granddad’s old hand-me-down shot pouch to put their winnings in.  The bag should be able to hold about 25 – 30 marbles, and there was no real requisite to what it … [Read more...] about It’s In the Bag