Ruminations on Being a Collector, a Marble Collector
By Matthew Davis (BIBLEfreak)
One overcast morning, as I walked to school, a crow swooped down and dropped a small white orb at my feet. I bent down to find a solid white game marble. I looked up and shouted, “Thank you!” as the crow flew away.
The love of marbles starts differently for everyone. I’d love to hear your story. We all have unique tales that fill us with wonder from times fondly remembered. A time when playing outside was disorganized, “Our Gang” style fun. Unfortunately, this is seldom understood by generations raised on Atari, Nintendo, and the magic of electronic wizardry.
Marble collectors are a special breed. Captured by intense feelings rooted in nostalgia, they gather to play, share, and experience the thrill of the hunt. In the days when childhood presented a social infrastructure only children could comprehend, fun was made in the dirt, mud, or any patch of ground suitable to lose ourselves in.
Competition on the playground, park, forest, creek, or vacant lot was laced with the wonderment of being completely lost in the outside world. Consumed by the pursuit of claiming victory, winning a coveted Bumble Bee, Liberty, Oxblood, or Cat’s Eye. Playing for fun or risking it all and playing for keeps, saving up to buy the 25, 30, or 100 count bag of American magic at the Five and Dime, to lose, share, or win with our friends. Good times.
Boulders, toe breakers, steelies, peewees, shooters, clearies, aggies, slags, cat’s eyes, swirls, and crystals. These are the things the honorable society of marble collectors is comprised of. It’s a little magical. Distilled into the souls of grown-ups through longing, scraped knees, occasional losses, triumphant wins, and eventual adolescent obscurity.
For some, it was replaced by sports, obsession with appearance, or that someone who became our first crush, love, or perhaps even our forever and only one. Marbles are associated with being a child. This is why those of us in the know will continue to hear the same old adage, “I guess you haven’t lost all your marbles!” when we share for the first time with new friends and acquaintances that we are Marble Collectors.
They cannot understand, at least at first, the intense passion these small works of art bring to our inmost being. You don’t go digging holes in the ground, gushing over the next find, or suddenly spawn a winsome infectious smile over anything unless the passion it brings is genuine and real.
There are the alchemists. Those fascinated by the process, forever tinkering, torching, rolling, mixing, imagining how to accomplish a small wonder which can then be shared. Think for a moment of the wizards of the industry in American machine-made glass marbles. Imagine tinkering with machines, fire, glass, colors, and creating joy. Historical, lasting joy.
There are the stragglers. Those who find and keep a collection of beach, creek, riverbed, trail, park, street, or similarly escaped marbles. Examples that flew from a slingshot, shot from a spring-launched modified BB rifle, snuck out a pocket hole, hidden in the shadows of the setting sun, or relocated by a bird to a new home. Imagine you are the marble found, fawned over, cleaned, shared, pondered, and kept with warm affection together with others of your kind.
There are the hoarders. Those who collect every kind of marble, bags, boxes, blister packs, toys, industrial, and anything in-between. Cases, sure. 100lb 5-gallon solid glass container filled with mishmash, of course. Marble room nearly or totally inaccessible, yup. They know they are addicts, but it’s a benign addiction. Imagine the loot in these collections. Imagine the possibility of finding a rare gem. That perfect pattern, particular twist. The way the hunter sees value in the hunt, the hoarder sees value in collecting every marble that same way. They all have value; they are all rare gems.
There are those just passing through. The estate sale newbies, the flea market scourers, the Marble King Mainliners, Vitro Freaks, CAC Fiends, Champion Fanatics, Peltier Aficionados, and JABO Junkies (yeah, that’s me. Sorry if I missed your favorite).
Buyers, sellers, and traders who feed the search through every trade, each buy and sale to keep the marbles flowing. These are the folks who have always been good at trading up. Two of these for one of those. They work with Bobbie-Ann to get her those Akro Oxbloods in trade because she has that Calligraphy needed to complete the set. I know you don’t have to imagine because you know.
Every collector has a compulsion rooted in a joy which only the next fix of marbles can assuage. If we are honest, there is a little bit of every type of Marble Maniac in us. We call ourselves collectors, Marble Collectors, as if we were Bond, James Bond.
We play, we laugh, we live, we die. We recognize the addiction and celebrate with gathering. It is the inner child we celebrate, adore, and cherish. We are like kittens wildly chasing a marble tossed into a shallow cardboard box. But unlike kittens, we have yet to grow tired of chasing marbles. I hope we never do.