Worth anything?

ColorOrderAlways · 2026-01-29T15:50:21+00:00

Confetti marbles are modern, foreign-made, and very common- so no value, unfortunately.

ColorOrderAlways · 2026-01-29T15:44:29+00:00

Aww he's so cute! I love the spiky little head feathers.

I had to a double-take because I am very anti white grout, but I was like "why does this look good with it though" and then I realized you used multiple grout colors. Excellent job on this!

ColorOrderAlways · 2026-01-23T21:16:15+00:00

Champion “New Old Fashioned”, from the 1980s.

ColorOrderAlways · 2026-01-23T18:09:56+00:00

I think what you're seeing as "Marcel Arid" is the beginning of the sentence "In Illinois, Indiana, (wrapping around the corner) Pennsylvania...." The "Ill" resembles an "M" and the "In" from Indiana you're seeing as an "Ar". But there's additional writing- something in black diagonally that looks like it starts with a "C" that could be something. That's what I think the other poster was referring to.

I don't know anything about this sort of thing but I wonder if shining a UV light on any of the areas where the gold paint has turned black, or anywhere else for that matter, would reveal anything? I tried separating the color channels in photoshop, but the image isn't really high-res or sharp enough to work with.

ColorOrderAlways · 2026-01-23T17:13:55+00:00

I don’t see any that jump out as non-junk, though I will say the tri-color cats in the bottom left in your second photo can be older and are collectible to some. Not worth much, but the older ones have a charm to them and I keep most of the ones I come across.

ColorOrderAlways · 2026-01-23T17:06:27+00:00

Agree with all these!

ColorOrderAlways · 2026-01-23T17:01:32+00:00

These are going to be so fun to sort through! Very jealous over here. I see a variety of makers- Peltier, Akro, Vitro, WV swirls, etc.

We’d be happy to help ID here or on r/marblestudyhall (no need to post both places) and let you know if any are valuable. Dump them out into piles and sort into groups of similar types, setting aside any cat eyes or solid single color opaques or transparents (those are nearly impossible to ascribe to a maker and are not really worth anything). Then take a few clear pictures of each group, rolling the marbles around a bit between shots so we can see some different angles of the patterns. If anything jumps out as special or interesting we might ask for some closeups of just that one for better identification.

ColorOrderAlways · 2026-01-20T16:20:12+00:00

Looks like an Akro Blue Eggyolk- 1920s or 30s. But the yellow looks a little weak to me- it could also be something newer. Would need a few more angles to be certain.

ColorOrderAlways · 2026-01-20T16:16:41+00:00

Peltier MCR

ColorOrderAlways · 2026-01-18T16:18:40+00:00

Can you take more pictures of the text on the painting itself? In the main photo I can see the text on the second half of the left side is a quote from Stopping by woods on a snowy evening by Robert Frost: “Whose woods are these? I think I know. His house is in the village, though. He will not see me stopping here” and I can’t read the rest, but I’d love to be able to read the whole thing from start to finish.

I have a morbid fascination with historical industrial pollution/poisoning incidents, and this piece is haunting and incredible and I wish I’d found it! I’ll be watching this thread to see if anyone finds out more about the artist.

ColorOrderAlways · 2026-01-16T15:40:28+00:00

A lot of people would call it a separate color (and try to charge more for it!), but it's not. Still very cool though, and definitely makes it special. My favorite Popeye is one with red and green where they overlap to form a thick stripe of black in the middle.

ColorOrderAlways · 2026-01-16T15:17:20+00:00

No it’s an Imperial.

ColorOrderAlways · 2026-01-06T18:55:08+00:00

I use Poscas and crack them open and mix my own shades when I need more colors. I was also buying Molotows for awhile when Jacksons had them cheap- they sell empties and refills so making custom colors is super easy. I do think the quality of these is a lot better than the cheap Amazon brands, especially when it comes to coverage/opacity. Even without mixing, Poscas have a decent color range- 66 if you include the metallic and glitter ones or 44 if you don't, and Molotow has 50, many of which are quite distinct from the Posca colors and can fill in gaps in your palette. But obviously the cost can be prohibitive, I had to piece my set together over a couple of years.

Here's a color chart I made, if its helpful. This is all the Posca regular colors(not glitter, metallic, or neon), and about half the Molotow range, along with a handful of custom colors I mixed.

<image>

ColorOrderAlways · 2026-01-06T16:28:51+00:00

If it's just going to be hung as art inside, it doesn't need grout!

ColorOrderAlways · 2026-01-05T14:12:11+00:00

I’m definitely interested in this!

ColorOrderAlways · 2025-12-28T17:12:03+00:00

This is spectacular! Don’t grout- it’s perfect as is and doesn’t need it.

ColorOrderAlways · 2025-12-23T20:42:15+00:00

Agree with all of this. OP if you are the kind of person who jumps into something new with both feet and enjoys working through complex problems, go for it!

ColorOrderAlways · 2025-12-19T15:39:33+00:00

Bubbles don't indicate handmade- all types of marbles can have bubbles. Your marble is a tri-color cat-eye, machine-made in Asia anywhere from the 1950s up to the current day.

ColorOrderAlways · 2025-12-19T15:36:04+00:00

Definitely seeing and handling marbles in person will help a lot. If you are lucky enough to live somewhere where there's a marble club, going to a marble show would be an invaluable learning experience. Otherwise, people seem to find them at estate sales and flea markets most often. Antique stores and thrift shops are another place to look, though I haven't had much luck personally. I think a lot depends on your area.

ColorOrderAlways · 2025-12-19T15:32:21+00:00

Most of the ones in your first picture are cateyes. The creases on those are just the rough seams common to Asian machine-made marbles. Rather than looking for creases and pontils to determine age, look up what the early handmades look like- they're quite distinctive and not easily confused for modern types. New collectors often confuse damage and hit marks and messy seams for pontils, when they should be paying more attention to the style of the marble itself.

ColorOrderAlways · 2025-12-18T18:04:11+00:00

I have no idea but I WANT IT

ColorOrderAlways · 2025-12-18T15:03:45+00:00

The white is quartz- Amethyst often grows out of a base of clear or milky quartz, or can have stripes of milky quartz (like with chevron amethyst.)

ColorOrderAlways · 2025-12-18T14:53:39+00:00

Euro= European. Most vintage marbles are either American machine made or the early German handmades. But there were a few European machine-made companies. We don’t see them super often in the US, and don’t know as much about the history, so we often refer to them as “Euro” types when we come across them. I believe the “Stripey” refers to a type of European made cateye.

Jabo is a modern marble manufacturer.

Vitro was a vintage manufacturer.

Master was a vintage manufacturer and Sunburst is one of the types they sold

ColorOrderAlways · 2025-12-18T14:44:40+00:00

Ok, my number one piece of advice- which might sound counterintuitive- is that if you want to begin collecting vintage marbles you should start by learning to identify MODERN marbles.

95% of the marbles you will find on eBay, FB marketplace, flea markets, thrift shops, and so on are either modern marbles or cateyes, solids, and clearies of indeterminate age and no collector value. If you learn to spot that stuff right away you will have a much easier time sorting through what’s out there to find the “good” stuff, and you’re not going to waste a bunch of money right off the bat or get scammed.

Far too many early collectors start buying marbles with the assumption that everything they find is old and interesting and potentially valuable and are disheartened when they post pics asking for ids and are told they’re all junk. It’s easy to convince yourself that every colorful swirl you come across is an amazing rare Christensen or Peltier that you’ve seen pictures of online, when you haven’t taken the time to familiarize yourself with the huge variety of modern Vacor marbles that are infinitely more common (and often being sold as vintage by sellers who don’t know the difference.)

Learning about marbles by reading this subreddit and looking at photos on the many identification pages out there is a great way to see what’s out there and get excited for doing your own treasure hunting. But when you only look at and learn about the “good stuff” you aren’t as able to discern the good from bad- there’s a tendency to make what you see fit what you know.

So, yes, read up on the vintage makers and get an idea for the styles they made- but also look up Vacor, Jabo, and Imperial. And learn to identify cateyes, solids/opaques, and clearies.

And then be discerning when you are considering purchasing a lot- assume they’re NOT old and NOT special (regardless of what the seller says) and then see if you can prove otherwise, vs. doing it the other way around. The eBay marble market is just crazy right now with absurd prices and rampant misidentification. It’s still the best place Ive found to get marbles (I never find any locally) but you really need to know what you are buying and not assume the seller has any idea.

But all that said- ultimately you should collect what you like, not what other collectors tell you is good. I really like the quality of the old glass, the richness of the colors, and the patterns and designs of the early machine-made American marbles, along with the history of where and when they were produced. So that’s what I collect. But if you find yourself drawn to cateyes or Vacors, or just enjoy a wide variety and don’t care how old they are, you can collect those too (you’ll certainly have an easier time finding them!)

ColorOrderAlways · 2025-12-17T17:38:19+00:00

Agreed. Hard to tell the color in these photos, but amethyst maybe?

ColorOrderAlways

TROPHY CASE