If you grab a handful of marbles, you notice at once their cool, smooth feel and the pleasurable heaviness they create in your palm. Take two or three and shake them in your lightly closed fist; they rattle around with pleasing clicks. Marbles are fun to touch to look at and probably even more fun to look at and examine closely. The variety of colors and designs is outstanding. Clear glassies, called “clearies” for example, have no pattern running through them. If you hold them up to the light, its interior seems to glow. You may see tiny air bubbles within the clearly; these were captured in the marbles as it was being made.
A “purine” or “purey” on the other hand, is a pure clearly, without any air bubbles in it. Then they are opaque which don’t let any light shine through. They can be “solids” or the well-known “cat’s eyes”. Marbles may be decorated with dozen of delicate swirls, ripping like a pond disturbed by a single stone.