Identifying/Naming Marbles

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Sometimes the best you can do is make an educated guess as to the colors used. The more Marbles you see, the better you'll be able to decipher the colors that were most likely used. There are times when a Marble is almost, if not totally, unidentifiable. Such as the lure pictured to the right.

Even Lanier, could not be 100% as to the correct Marble name for it. In all likelihood it is Yellow/Bone/Black Marble, but there is no way to be 100%. Lanier tried to help us ascertain the correct identity at the Milwaukee Show in 2002. Finally, a ruling was made to create a name for the color. Colleen was very happy to offer up the suggestion of "Harvest Moon". Which Lanier agreed would be an appropriate name. He then signed the box as such for us. We were happy with the ruling as well, because we could consider it a different color and add it to our collection.

What made the bait unidentifiable was the lack of an observable base color. Typically most Marbles will have a distinguishable base color that is more dominant than the other colors used. It is quite often noticeable at the nose of the lure. Such as in the lure pictured to the right.

This lure is Red/Bone/Blue Marble. Note the Red at the nose of the lure. Red was the base color for the lure; therefore, we place it first in the name of the lure. We devised this sytem for two reasons. First, we wanted to have a consistent way to name and keep inventory of our Marble Nianguas. Secondly, we found it gave us an opportunity to add more Marble Nianguas to our collection. We'll explain that more shortly.

Back to the naming of the Marbles. To the right is an example of a lure that does not have a distintive base color at the nose of the lure.

It does; however, have a dominant color. It would be the Bone which is strongly evident on the sides of the lure. In our system this lure is named Bone/Red/Blue Marble, becaue Bone is the base color. We always list the base color first in the name. The other colors used are impossible to determine as to the order of introduction to the lure. So, we just go with what flows (sounds) best.

Now to get back to the ability to add more Marble Nianguas to our collection. The two lures above could be considered the same, as they have the same colors used in the Marble - Red, Bone and Blue. We choose to view them as two different Marbles, because the base color was different on them. This affords us the opportunity to add more!!!

We also consider any Marbles which Little Sac Tackle gives a specific name to (such as Bloody Marble), as different regardless of whether the same colors were used to create another unnamed Marble Niangua.

The Nianuas to the right would be an example of that. The one on the top is named (stamped on the box - Bloody Marble). The one on the bottom we call Yellow/Red/Black Marble. They may have had the same colors used in their creation, but because one was given a specific name we added them both.

So it's not as hard as you first thought, right?

WELL...

Look at the Nianguas below. Although these three Nianguas are most likely all the same color (Bone/Yellow/Red/Black Marble), there is a striking difference in their appearance! Because of that we decided that we would like to include them all in our collection.

Which leads us back to the first two sentences on this page.

Sometimes the best you can do is make an educated guess as to the colors used.
The more Marbles you see, the better you'll be able to decipher the colors that were MOST likely used.