OldRareMarbles.com is owned and operated by Jeff & Tammy Baker near the Spokane Washington area (high-end marble collectors for over 39 years). Most collectors who know Jeff & Tammy will say they are well-known, well-liked, and trusted members of the marble community.  Jeff & Tammy Baker are the founders of the very first marble show in the Pacific Northwest (The Pacific NW Marble Convention) in Salem & Portland in the late 1980’s, which was moved north and taken over by a different host who called it the SeaTac show.  Later the International Association of Marble Collectors (IAMC) was established, which is still in operation in Tukwila Washington today…known as the “Seattle Show.”

” Nearly every marble offered here will have original as-made surfaces.  Assume all marbles offered on this site will have the original surface glass unless otherwise indicated.  We avoid polished, buffed or reconditioned marbles whenever possible.

Pictures are taken to be honest representations of the marbles and we do not manipulate pictures to hide damage or flaws. We also do our best to capture the authentic colors of the marbles and will adjust the photo to accomplish this if necessary; therefore you may notice a slight difference in background color from slide to slide. We attempt to capture the true colors of what you would expect to see in hand if possible. Sometimes this is not possible in spite of our best efforts and in such cases we try to make note of it in the description.

Marble sizes vary dramatically.  The size of the marble may not be immediately apparent from the photo.  Background detail can be helpful to compare and contrast with other photographed marbles, but always pay close attention to the size description.  Marbles may appear to be approximately the same size in the photos but vary greatly from less than 1/2” to approximately 2-1/2” in diameter.

Most likely the marble will look better in hand than in the photos. All marbles are photographed to show close up detail, which can exaggerate surface imperfections.  Even the most minor of flaws will be magnified and look more obvious on a computer screen than it will in hand.

German handmade marbles were typically made from canes of glass that they created first, then stretched to a desired length or diameter. The construction of the caned dictated what the marbles would look like and they would all look basically the same from that one cane.  Most canes would be produced with an inner core design (typically of a circular core of latticino threads, multiple ribbons, a solid core, or a single flat ribbon), then a second layer of outer threads or ribbons.  Most commonly if there were threads inside, ribbons would be applied to the outer layer and visa versa.  Once the canes were made, they’d begin working marbles off it one at a time, shaping it while still hot, then cutting it free with marble scissors…creating the “pontil”.  There is a smoother cupped pontil and a basal pontil from where it was pinched from the cane, which is either “faceted” or “rough”.  Pontils were finished with fine little facets to make them more perfectly round during the first few decades of glass marble manufacturing, but around 1880 this practice was discontinued to increase factory efficiency and profits, and the pontils were left rough.  Therefore, viewing the type of pontil on a German handmade marble will give you insight into its approximate age.   

Earlier marbles that were cut from a cane would have less of a twist to them than marbles worked from the canes later, as the canes would become more twisty as they would work with them.  Marbles will almost always have 2 pontils (one from where the cane was cut free from the last marble made, and the second from where the marble was cut from the cane). Exceptions to this are marbles that were the first off the cane, or those that were intentionally made as single marbles, such as sulphides, which have a white chalk-like carved figure inside. 

We are often asked whether factory imperfections affect the value of a German handmade marble.  It’s not a simple straight forward answer…  
(1) Some factory flaws are desirable such as broken and re-fused canes, starter cores (where they built a marble over a previous cane), which is common in onionskins because they thought the new “skin” would hide the one inside, but they didn’t know there’d someday be collectors looking with a pen light and magnifying glass down the pontils to view inside the marbles for unique inconspicuous features.  Even end-of-cane swirls are factory errors because the ribbons splay and come to the surface instead of to the pontil (most first-off-cane ends were discarded).   The last of the canes were always discarded when they grew too short to be worked with anymore, as they were just a stretched out tail of a cane remnant.
(2) Most factory flaws don’t cause much concern or effect the value such as a piece of oven brick or mild cold-roll lines.
(3) Other factory flaws can be detrimental such as annealing fractures (where the marble cracked during cooling), being made out of round, big protruding or intrusive pontils, snapped pontils, obtrusive bubbles, drastic asymmetry to the pattern, or deep cold-roll line crevices.