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How to Appraise Marbles

Marbles have been made in one form or another for thousands of years. Archeologists have unearthed small round stones for gaming in prehistoric graves in Egypt, the Middle East and Austria. The best early marbles were made from polished marble -- hence the name -- but many were manufactured from clay or china. Colored glass marbles first appeared in the 15th century, but they weren't produced in any great numbers until the 1850s when glassblowers in Germany developed shears for rapidly cutting canes of molten glass into small, marble-sized segments. The popularity of these hand-made European marbles continued until the First World War, when supplies dwindled and machine-made marbles from the United States began to dominate the market.

Instructions

- 1
  Check to see which material the marble is made froml. If it has any kind of eye-catching color pattern, then it will be a glass marble. China and clay marbles are plain-looking, with only basic floral decoration at best, and their chips or dents will show discoloration. Because they lack visual appeal, these are of little interest to collectors, even though some of them can be hundreds of years old.
- 2
  Examine the marble carefully to see if if there are any slight puckerings in the surface of the glass. Known as pontil marks, these are a sign of hand craftsmanship. A marble with no pontil marks is machine-made and thus unlikely to be collectible. A marble with two pontil marks - one on either side -- was probably made in the 1850 to 1914 period by a glassblower specializing in marbles. A marble with only one pontil mark is known as an "end of day" piece. This means it was made by a glassblower as a one-off, probably as a present for a child. "End of day" marbles are much more scarce that their ordinary handmade counterparts.
- 3
  Inspect the marble's pattern. As a general rule, the more painstaking and deliberate the pattern seems, the more collectible the marble is likely to be. For this reason, among the least interesting are "slag" marbles made from odds and ends of colored glass squashed together at random. By far the most collectible are "sulphides." Dating from Germany in the 1850s, these are clear marbles housing small clay figures, usually busts of famous people, depictions of landmark buildings and so on. Sulphides are scarce and valuable.
- 4
  Check the condition of the marble. While collectors will overlook tiny blemishes, a marble that has sustained multiple chips will have little resale value.

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