FOR ALL THE MARBLES: IT ISN'T A GAME

Steven Johnson doesn't lose his marbles. He just buys and sells them.

The Carbondale, Ill., college professor has his share of marbles.

"It is a good investment," said Johnson who is a computer teacher at Shawnee Community College's Anna campus.

Antique marbles can increase in value 20 to 30 percent in a year, he said.

A quart jar full of 1920s and 1930s glass marbles could be worth as much as $10,000, he said.

An antique marble can cost as little as $15 to $20 for one with a corkscrew or swirl design.

Some of the most valuable are the large clear glass marbles or sulphides that date back more than a century. The marbles, many of them made in Germany from the 1870s to around 1910, featured ceramic objects inside the glass balls.

A marble with several objects inside can command a price of $8,000 to $10,000, he said.

The ceramic objects, often white in color, include angels, numbers, animals and people.

The ones with ceramic people are very rare and expensive. "Human figures are worth more than farm animals," said marble collector and dealer Dale Mendenhall of Buffalo, Ill.

At a marble show at Shawnee Community College in Ullin, Ill., last week, Mendenhall was offered $1,500 for one antique marble by two different buyers.

He turned them down. Mendenhall said the sulphide is worth several thousand dollars.

When it comes to his hobby, Mendenhall goes for all the marbles. He has thousands of them.

Marbles have been around for centuries. Marbles made of baked clay have been found in prehistoric caves. The ancient Romans played games of marbles 2,000 years ago.

Agate or stone marbles have been around for years.

But it is the glass marbles of the late 1800s and early 1900s that are the most sought after by collectors today.

"They have to have almost a perfect surface to be worth anything," Johnson said.

In addition to handmade marbles, there are machine-made marbles.

A number of American companies turned out machine-made marbles in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s.

Factories hired glass chemists from Europe and turned out 100,000 marbles a day.

But World War II hurt the industry because it was difficult to get materials from Europe, Johnson said.

By the 1950s, American marble companies had largely gone out of business.

Today, cheap marbles are produced in China, Japan and Mexico. The largest marble company in the world is in Mexico, Johnson said.

Antique marbles can be found in a dizzying array of colors. Their names are just as colorful.

There are Supermen, which are red, yellow and blue like the colors of the Superman comic book hero

Ketchup and Mustard marbles are named for their color. Bloodies are marbles that are blood red in color.

Onionskin marbles are so named because the colors are close to the surface.

Swirls and corkscrews come in a seemingly endless rainbow of colors and are named for their designs.

Popeye marbles get their name from the boxes they came in that featured the sailor character on them.

Marbles are worth more in their original boxes, Mendenhall said.

Johnson credits Mendenhall with teaching him a lot about marble collecting.

Johnson, 49, played with marbles when he was a child. But he never thought about collecting them until five years ago when he ended up with some marbles from an estate.

"I just happened to get them because no one else wanted them," he said.

"I got into it because I think they are pretty," he explained.

Johnson enjoys finding rare marbles. "It is a treasure hunt."

Johnson has never been in it for the money. "I sold a lot of marbles for a tenth of what they were worth. People all over Southern Illinois saw me as the Kmart of marble dealers."

He likes educating people about marbles. "I am more a teacher than a profiteer."

For Johnson and others, there is nothing like the solid beauty of a marble. For them, it is a hobby worth all the marbles.