You had your basic, small size marble with some labeled “cat’s eyes” that were clear and had some form of object in them. The small marbles were more or less the peasants in the marble world, the pennies in a sea of coins. I can’t remember what we called the larger marbles but they were the envy of any marble collection. Lastly, there were ‘steelies’ which weren’t really marbles; they were ball bearings from someone’s dad who worked at a tool & die-type factory but in high demand within the marble throwing world.
I don’t know if everyone played this way but the premise of our version of marbles was one person threw their marble out there (can’t remember who had to throw first) and if the other person hit the other marble with theirs in the air, the marble that was hit was theirs. It was key to make sure your initial throw had some force behind it as if you missed, the other person got to shoot at your marble from wherever your attempt landed. If it was a large marble versus a small marble, the small marble had to hit the large marble more than once (the large marble owner would place the count needed) for ownership of said large marble. One kid had a HUGE steelie (larger than a large marble) and would ask for something like 20 hits for ownership of it. The thing was so big that if you hit it a couple of times, your marble would shatter and the game was over for the little guy.
I recall being pretty good, not great, at the craft as I had my share of large marbles but no huge steelies. I think my collection is buried deep within a city dump somewhere today but a fun time it was.
Trail Head
