Machined vs Hand Made

Chris

If you take a look at the marble I've used as my profile image, you'll see that the top of the marble pictured looks ground down. That's called a pontil, which is exclusive to handmades. They're ground down at the place where they came off the hot canes - after cooling. They were ground or melted to make them smooth and round. Machine made marbles don't have pontisl. Some transitionals have pontils - these are marbles made between 1890-1920, when machine made marbles were introduced in combination with hand labor and were more cost efficient for manufacturers. I hope this helps!

Dan

It doesn't look like the hand made ones are completely round. I've never played marbles, but wouldn't that hinder things when playing this game? I'm sure in this day and age, nobody even plays marbles unless there is a Playstation version.

Can you ballpark what hand made marbles sell for?

---Chris

In my opinion handmade prices are way down! Size and condition are a big plus even though most are from the 1800's. A quick valuation tool is Ebay. Although it doesn't reflect what you will get at a Marble Show by any means it does tell you what people are looking for.

When I first started collecting marbles the handmade were through the roof. Now I'm lucky to get $10 for a 5/8" Lat.

~Rhonda