March 18, 2024

Marble Club to provide learning experience

The Iowa Marble Club will have its inaugural meeting Saturday at the Prairie City Community building with a goal to share information about marbles and gain interest in the art of collecting and playing.

Founder of the club, Chad Cline, took over the Iowa Marble Show in June of 2013. The show has been around for 38 years, but the club is just a year old.

Cline said Saturday’s event is primarily meant to provide information about the hobby of collecting marbles and to have fun sharing each other’s passions.

“I want the public to come in because they probably always knew about marbles, but specifically I want people to bring their kids in because I want them to share their pastime,” Cline said. “Nothing has to be plugged in here, there’s no Xbox and no PlayStation. It’s just kids learning how to shoot marbles and people reintroducing them to what marbles has become now.”

Cline started this hobby in the early 90s collecting mainly antique and vintage marbles, but the club event will feature contemporary marbles as well. According to Cline, the club was formed to promote the hobby of collecting, to teach children how to play the game and to preserve the history of marbles.

“It’s amazing to see someone who’s 70 years old who used to play marbles and you watch their face light up because they didn’t realize people even collect anymore,” Cline said. “It takes them back to a time that was extremely happy for them.”

People who collect marbles do it because it brings back memories, Cline said. However, there’s also a chance of hitting the jackpot. According to Cline, the price of a marble can vary significantly from just a few pennies to thousands of dollars. A single marble once sold for more than $20,000, which is why the Iowa Marble Club will be offering appraisals at the event as well.

“People will bring in a jar of marbles, they do it all the time in our show,” Cline said. “We’ll sit down with them for free and just tell them what they are. The beauty of it is that we don’t buy them. If you have a $1,000 marble, which happened last fall, we’ll tell you.”

However, there will still be plenty of buying, trading and selling at the meeting, according to Cline. The club has approximately 25 members, but the event has free admission and is open for anyone to attend.

Charles Williams is a member of the club and is also the vice president of the Kansas City Marble Club. He said when he started collecting about 12 years ago he was surprised at how many people have the same interest.

“There are a lot of what I call “closet collectors,” they don’t attend shows or any formal gatherings for marbles, but they’re out there.” Williams said. “I collected marbles for a year or two before I knew there were even marble collectors in my area. There are a lot more collectors out there than I think we realize and it’s a wide spectrum of people who collect, from kids to grandma and grandpa.”

The first Iowa Marble Club meeting will run from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday. While people share their passion for collecting marbles, there will also be free pizza and beverages.

“We’re going to have people talking about marbles and we’re going to have people demonstrating how to shoot a marble if anybody’s curious,” Cline said. “It’ll be a laid back environment. It’s not anything fancy; it’s just a bunch of people who like marbles.”

Contact Alex Olp at aolp@myprairiecitynews.com