Vigo County Historical Society

Boys game from years gone by now left mostly to collectors

The game of marbles played by boys knuckling down in the hot summer dirt is almost a thing of the past.

Now big boys play with marbles, by collecting the clays, woodens, agates and beautiful glass swirls. The game of marbles, like so many relics from the past, has given way to the modern inventions and new games of the electronic age, and left the marble itself to the collectors with memories of games of keepsies and funsies.

A hundred years ago, little boys would rush from their one-room school house when the bell rang, draw a circle in the hard prairie dirt and knuckle down to a serious game of marbles.

They sometimes played for funsies but mostly it was a game of keepsies, and the winner would keep the loser’s marbles. Many a small boy went home saddened by the loss of his favorite shooter.

They played games like Potty, which was a circle with a hole in the center dug out by a heel, and the boys aimed at this hole, the pot. The first boy in the hole claimed the other marbles left in the circle,

Older Bowler, reportedly Abraham Lincoln’s favorite game, was played in a square, with a marble placed at each corner and one in the center. They were numbered, the one in the center being number one, and had to be knocked out of the square in order.

There were many different marble games and many variations.

The word marble was derived from the balls made of alabaster and marble during the Roman Empire. The game was carried to England during the Roman Invasion and brought to America by British colonists. Archeologists have found evidence of marble games being played in the ancient civilizations of Egypt and India, and the New World artifacts have been found in the Aztec digs, as well as at the mounds created by the moundbuilding native American tribes of the Mississippi Valley.

Many kinds of marbles are collected today. One of the prized marbles to be found is a sulfide, a clear glass marble with a three-dimensional clay figure inside.

The older, more valuable ones have air bubbles in the glass, while the ones made after World War II do not. Agates were chalcedony quartz ground in Germany in the 18th century. The natural quartz was red and white or brown and white, but quartz marbles also have been found dyed green, blue or black.

The imitations are of glass and called aggies. Although glass marbles are the popular modern marble for playing, they are rare in antique collections.

The old handmade glass marbles have pontil marks, where they were snipped off the glass rod, and were usually clear glass with beautiful colored swirls inside. The old clay and wooden marbles are still inexpensive when found