Technorati Tags: Marbles for sale, vintage marbles

Benningtons are a glazed stoneware vintage marbles. Easy and cheap to produce, clay marbles were fired in a kiln with a salt glaze on them. These vintage marbles did not require the technical skill of handmade glass marbles.

To identify Benningtons look for, ‘eyes’ which mark where the marbles touched during firing leaving spots with no colour and unglazed. Found in three colour variations, brown (most common), blue, and my favourite the fancy which was glazed in multicoloured patches as if sponged.

I was recently surprised to discover that “Bennington” is a somewhat misleading name for these vintage marbles as there is no evidence or records to suggest they were ever produced in Bennington, Vermont!

Vermont authorities have even denied Benningtons were manufactured there, yet the term still survives in the hobby of collecting marbles.

It is known that the Bennington vintage marbles were produced in Germany during the late 1800’s and early 1900’s.

The Peltier Glass Company was founded in 1886 by Victor Peltier, originally produced vintage marbles under the name “The Novelty Glass Company”. The name was changed to the Peltier Glass Company in 1919. Located in Ottawa, Illinois, Peltier is still in operation today, but no longer produces vintage marbles.

The earliest Peltier marbles are single-stream. These vintage machine made marbles are usually referred to as “Miller” marbles because they were produced using Peltier’s first marble machine, designed by an enthusiastic employee named Miller.

Peltier slags have a transparent coloured base glass with a single opaque white swirled in. Peltier slags are rarer than many other vintage marbles and are identifiable by the very fine feathering pattern produced by the white swirls.

Another vintage marble of Peltier’s is a “multi-colour swirl”. It has a transparent coloured base with several opaque colours swirled in, with more common multi-colours found the colours are actually ribbons, not swirls.

Another of the vintage marbles produced with the famous Miller machine swirl is called a “Honey Onyx”. These have a semi-opaque white base with a thin translucent brown patch and a thin translucent green stripe on the marble.

The fantastic vintage marbles designs of the “Peltier Picture Marbles” (also known as Character Marbles) are Peltier “Peerless” with a black transfer of one of twelve different King Syndicate comic characters fired on the marble surface. I have a great fondness for these picture marbles simply because they are so much fun. Unfortunately many reproductions and fakes exist. The twelve characters are Emma, Koko, Bimbo, Andy, Smitty, Annie, Herbie, Sandy, Skeezix, Betty, Moon, Kayo. Anybody got the complete set? Let us know!

Probably the most collectible of Peltier’s vintage marbles are the “National Line Rainbo”. With an opaque base color and four to six thin ribbons in the surface this truely is an amazing marble to have in any collection. They can be distinguished from Miller Machine vintage marbles because they have two seams on them, as if they were two halves, plus the ribbons are usually translucent to transparent on the tri-colour National Line Rainbos, and opaque on the Miller Machine tri-colours. But if the ribbons are all the same colour, then the marble is referred to as a two-colour National Line Rainbo. The base colour can be either opaque white or an opaque colour.

Some of the great colour combinations have inspired wonderful names among collectors, including Zebra, Bumblebee, Cub Scout, Wasp and Tiger. Tri-color National Line Rainbos have also inspired a series of fantastic names for collecting. Some of my personal favourites are Ketchup & Mustard, Christmas Tree, Golden Rebel, Superman, Flaming Dragon and Blue Galaxy.

More common vintage marbles from Peltier include the Rainbo. These are a more recent marble. A two seam design, the base glass can be a variety of opaque or transparent colours, depending on the particular type of Rainbo, and they all have a ribbon or pair of ribbons encircling the equator of the marble. There is a basic difference between a National Line Rainbo and a Rainbo. In a National Line Rainbo, the ribbons lay just on and below the surface of the marble. In a Rainbo, the ribbons go into the marble, towards the core.

In my vintage marbles collection I have Peltiers with a translucent white base and a pair of coloured ribbons encircling the equator called “Acme Realers”.

An opalescent white base with a pair of red ribbons encircling the equator which is called a “Bloodie”.

A bubble-filled transparent clear base with a red and white, orange and white, or yellow and white pair of ribbons encircling the equator known as “Sunsets”.

Also many examples of the transparent dark base with a yellow and white ribbon brushed on the equator of the marble called a “Champion Jr”.

Plus you will find transparent clear bases with ribbons of two or three different colours which are called “Clear Rainbos”.

Peltier also produced a type of cat’s-eye. The marble consists of a single-vaned opaque colour in transparent clear glass. They are referred to as “Bananas” because the shape of the vane looks like a banana.

If you have some fine Peltiers let us know and if you are looking to add to your collection make the most of my vintage marbles seeking skills right here on this site,

or maybe you got some Peltiers or other vintage marbles for sale then email us the link to vintagemarbles.forsale@googlemail.com and get your auction in front of marble buyers right now!

Technorati Tags: machine made marbles, peltier, vintage marbles

The Christensen Agate Company has a short but outstanding vintage marbles story. Started in 1925 in Payne, Ohio, the company was found by a number of Akron business men and a machine inventor from Pittsburgh.

The Christensen Agate Company is still to this day renound for the use of exotic glass colours in it’s vintage marbles. This stand out trait was thanks to a man named Arnold Fiedler. An expert glass chemist he knew how to make hundred’s of different compatible glass colours. It was the compatibility that was so important as it is what keeps any glass object from cracking apart because of differential internal stresses.

In 1927 The Christensen Agate Company relocated its vintage marbles production to the city of Cambridge, Ohio. At this time the city of Cambridge was attracting new businesses by offering large sums of money. With so much cutting edge experimenting going on with colour blending and automation, this new found capital was much needed.

The first truly automated machine made marbles were made by this company through the use of gob feeders. Unfortunately we can only wonder what else this inovating company would have come up with as the factory would meet its demise with the crash of the stock market and the start of the Great Depression.

One of the legends of marble history you just got to have some of those truely amazing Chrisensen Agate colours in your vintage marbles collection!

Technorati Tags: christensen agate, machine made, vintage marbles

Benningtons are a glazed stoneware vintage marbles. Easy and cheap to produce, clay marbles were fired in a kiln with a salt glaze on them. These vintage marbles did not require the technical skill of handmade glass marbles.

To identify Benningtons look for, ‘eyes’ which mark where the marbles touched during firing leaving spots with no colour and unglazed. Found in three colour variations, brown (most common), blue, and my favourite the fancy which was glazed in multicoloured patches as if sponged.

I was recently surprised to discover that “Bennington” is a somewhat misleading name for these vintage marbles as there is no evidence or records to suggest they were ever produced in Bennington, Vermont!

Vermont authorities have even denied Benningtons were manufactured there, yet the term still survives in the hobby of collecting marbles.

It is known that the Bennington vintage marbles were produced in Germany during the late 1800’s and early 1900’s.

Technorati Tags: bennington, handmade, vintage marbles

The Akro Agate marble company was originally formed by the Mess Rankin, Gilbert, Marsh and Hill. Begining life at the beginning of the 20th century above Marsh’s shoe store in Akron, Ohio, the Akro Agate company made and sold glass vintage marbles in packs of 25 for 50cents a pack!

Due to the booming marble trade the company was soon so successfull they had moved to bigger premises and in 1911 applied for the Akro Agate trade mark.

With continued soaring success in 1914 they moved into an existing large factory in Clarksburg, West Virginia.Then in 1916, the death of Mr Hill brought George Pfleuger into the company.

With the loss of German imports, the introduction of contemporary technology, and especially the use of a manufacturing process patented by Mr Hill, Akro Agate was able to make glass marbles both on a mass scale and cheaply. Akro Agate became a major players in the US marble market.

Akro Agate made the most of better technology for the manufacture of glass vintage marbles and in 1925 the Hartford Feeder system was introduced, this enabled glass to be delivered to the mold at an even pressure. Then came the Freese patent (also in 1925) which allowed the main tank of liquid glass to be coloured in the feeder system from remote small tanks of different coloured glass. 1932 brought the revolutionary John Early machine, amazingly doubling production! Although in a now developed form these technological breakthrough machines and systems are still in use in the marble industry today.

Akro Agate stopped manufacturing in 1949 with the last of their products auctioned on 24 April 1951. The Akro Agate vintage marbles are highly collectible today, with many specialist collectors holding an annual convention.

Technorati Tags: akro agate, machine made, vintage marbles

Until recently, machine made marbles were not considered collectible marbles.

But during the mid 1980s there were so many new collectors fascinated with the hobby of collecting vintage marbles that the demand for handmade marbles exploded to proportions that had not previously existed. Thus bumping up the prices of handmade marbles at a rapid rate. Smart collectors realised that they could acquire many extremely beautiful machine made marbles for the price of a single handmade marble.

Historical significance also created more attention for machine made marbles. Nearly all handmade marbles were made in Germany and then exported around the world. Whereas machine made marbles was almost exclusively an American product for the first half of this century. During this period, the United States began to rise as an economic power and so the rise and fortune of American marble manufacturers mirrored this.
The marble making machine was an American invention with the first one invented around 1905 by the now world famous Martin F. Christensen from Akron, Ohio.

Marble making machinery today is not that different to machinery used as way back in 1930. The 1920s and 1930s truly was the golden age of American machine made marble production.

By the mid-1980s, the kids who had played with mibs, aggies and commies in the playground and at the curb had grown up, become collectors and began buying back the vintage machine made marbles of their childhood. This created a time and environment ripe for the explosion of interest in vintage machine made marbles. There are now collectors who specialize in almost every American manufacturer of marbles: M.F. Christensen and Son Company, Christensen Agate Company, Akro Agate Company, Peltier Glass Company, Marble King, Vitro Agate Company, etc.

There are even some who now collect early American cat’s-eyes. This type of marble was originally machine made in small quantities by American manufacturers. But following World War II as part of the occupation reconstruction, marble making was one of the industries introduced to Japan.

By the 1960s, the Japanese toy industry was producing cats-eye marbles in huge bulk.

The ability of foreign manufacturers to produce cats-eye marbles in vast quantities at a very low cost (so much so that there are probably more cats-eye and chinese checker marbles in existence than all other types of marbles combined) eventually drove almost all American manufacturers out of the marble business.

By the early 1970s, only three American marble manufacturers still existed!

Today only two exist and at the present time, over 90 percent of the world’s marbles are produced in Mexico.

Technorati Tags: collectible marbles, vintage marbles

The 3 categories that all collectible vintage marbles fall into are;

• Handmade
• Machine Made
• Contemporary

Handmade marbles are marbles that were individually made by a highly skilled craftsman. Examples of vintage marbles can be traced right back to primitive and medieval times, these were made from rounded stone or clay.

Handmade vintage marbles most sought after by collectors today are those that were produced in Germany during the second half of the 19th century and during the first two decades of the 20th century.

A handmade marble is truely an object  of beauty and a technical feat of glasswork and art. With each handmade marble individually crafted by a person the skill and creativity of the craftsman can be seen in the twist of the marble, in its design, and in its colours. No two marble canes were the same, and no two marbles cut off the same cane are exactly the same!

Vintage marbles that are handmade command such high values because of their individuality, but also because of the labour intensive process of production. Did you know, the creation of a handmade swirl requires between four and twelve separate manual steps, if you have ever seen this process you will surely appreciate the length of time this takes!

See the amazing process of how handmade marbles are created.

Technorati Tags: collectible marbles, handmade marbles, vintage marbles

A short clip that shows a magnificent collection of vintage handmade glass marbles (made in Germany around 1850-1910). These are some of the finest examples of vintage marbles I have ever seen, enjoy!

Duration : 0:6:40

Read the rest of this entry »

Technorati Tags: handmade marbles, vintage marbles

I found a great piece at Ezinearticles about how vintage marbles collecting is fast becoming the hobby of choice for thousands of collectors.

Although I have had an interest in vintage marbles for some time I had never considered that marbles seem to be an indestructible collector’s item making them an even better choice for a collection idea.

It has always been difficult to classify collectible marbles so I took a minute to read this simple explanation of how five important factors will determine what a vintage marble is worth.

Do you know these five critical factors about the vintage marbles you may have in your collection?

What about that handmade glass marble you saw on eBay, is it worth a mint?

Get inspired about vintage marbles and find the five value factors in the full story.

Technorati Tags: vintage marbles