Sea Glass Rarities: The Extraordinary Tale of Finding a Red Shooter Marble

For me, beach combing and picking up sea glass and other relics has always been a pretty Zen experience. I get to be alone with my thoughts and just the sound of waves, wind and an occasional seagull.

My "Happy Place"

On most trips to the beach, nothing extraordinary happens... whether in terms of my surroundings, or in terms of what I find. Sure, now and then I am delighted to find something unusual... and even after some almost 50 years of beach combing, the "thrill of the hunt" has never died.

I go out there because it's peaceful.

I go out there because it allows me to disconnect from the world and-- in some odd way-- reconnect with myself and the source of everything.

I have always been somewhat of a loner, so a beach where only a stalwart few dare to venture is my ideal venue to chill out.

I expect that pretty much all dedicated sea glass enthusiasts have dreams of finding "some great rarity" on one of their outings. Maybe it's finding a sea glass marble. Maybe it's finding that first piece of super rare orange sea glass after 20 years of looking. There's little doubt in my mind that we beach walkers have at least some element of the "collector gene" that strives for ever "better and rarer" things.

So anyway, here's an unusual story of finding an exceptional sea glass rarity.

Some years ago, I found myself doing the Happy Dance on the beach because I found a genuine orange sea glass marble. Orange is the rarest color... finding an orange marble is just that much rarer.

The original orange marble... and then a red marble. But it is not
"THAT" red marble.

I celebrated the find with my wife Sarah... who then looked me in the eye and said "Awesome! Now you need to find the red one!"

I usually take Sarah's statements in stride... but I pay attention, knowing from experience that there's always a deeper meaning behind her statements. Sarah also happens to be one of the world's greatest psychics-- far more accurate and insightful than those "TV psychics." It's a bit beyond belief, at times... but it's true.

"The red one?" I replied

She considered for a bit, and then stated "I have been seeing a red marble out on that beach. It seems buried at the moment, but at some point the sea will shift the sands and it will come up, and you will find it."

In a sense, that started the "quest for the red marble," but we all know that we can't expect the beach to serve up particular sea glass "on demand." It doesn't happen that way... but I would always be looking specifically for a red marble, as I wandered the beach. I knew that if Sarah said it was there, it was there. But three miles of beach is a big place. Just because you've been told for sure that there's a needle in your haystack doesn't mean you can just go and lay your hands on it.

Some years went by, and no red marble. Then... on a rather windy winter day, I found a red marble!

Mightily impressed by Sarah's visionary powers, I was thrilled to show off my new rare treasure. I was a little surprised that Sarah didn't seem to share quite as much in my excitement.

"It's beautiful, don't get me wrong," she said, "but it's not the one I saw... it's still out there. It's much larger and has a faint orange sheen on one side."

A really LARGE red marble, With a bit of orange on one side...

Having collected sea glass for decades, I knew that orange and red marbles are extraordinarily rare. The fact that I had managed to find both an orange and a red marble in my lifetime seemed like a pretty amazing accomplishment. What Sarah was telling me about was clearly a "shooter" sized marble... and a red one, with some orange.

Large red marbles are not something you come across often. I have seen a few offered on eBay in the course of the past ten years, and they tend to sell for impressive amounts after heated bidding.

To find one would be... possibly the rarest piece of sea glass I've found. Ever. Period.

So, time passed... until we come to October 8th, 2015. Almost at the end of a tiring trip to the beach, I saw something that looked like a piece of brown in the sand. I'm not sure why, exactly (I don't typically pick up much brown sea glass), but I decided to poke at it... and realized there was "more there."

Imagine my surprise at what I pulled out! It was LARGE and it was RED and it had that bit of ORANGE on one side! I probably looked like a crazy big flapping bird, hopping around on the beach in my victory dance.

As you can see from the photo with my two previous treasures, it's a very impressive sea glass marble-- and possibly the most amazing find of my beach combing "career." And hats off to Sarah for "seeing it" out there, all those years ago. Seriously folks... what see intuits is real. As you can see,,,

I've already been asked several times if it's for sale.

Not entirely sure, yet... maybe if someone makes the proverbial "offer I can't refuse," I will share it with another collector. For the moment, I am just telling an amazing-- but TRUE-- story!

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Visit the North Beach Treasures sea glass shop on eBay

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Orange Sea Glass

According to most experts on sea glass, orange is the single rarest color we sea glass enthusiasts might find out there.

Because I beach comb a lot, I have had the good fortune to find quite a few pieces of orange glass, over the years. For many collectors, though, a piece of orange will remain something they only hope to find, but it never actually shows up.

There are good reasons why orange sea glass is so rare. If you think about it, where have you actually seen orange glass, to begin with? It's not a color that was ever used for any "production" or "large scale manufacturing" of glass. There are no orange bottles, that I know of. Orange glass dish ware? Not something I have seen.

I have found that you can always get a good idea of the sources for older sea glass by making a visit to your local antique mall and looking at the old glassware and bottles the vendors have for sale. You really are not likely to find much, in the way of orange glass.

There are a few "known" sources of older "production" orange glass. A limited number of automotive turn signals on older cars from an era where such things were still made of glass, rather than plastic. Same with a small number of lens covers on "caution" lamps and lanterns used for road works barriers, for example.

Another source for orange sea glass is "Amberina" art glass, which was first made in the 1880's but still in pretty limited amounts. It was in production into the 1960's and is generally the source for "two toned" pieces of orange sea glass because it was a mixed red and orange.

But even when we can identify the source of a particular color of glass, we still have another factor to consider: What's the likelihood that glass will make it into the ocean?

Aside from the scarcity (or not) of the original glass, you have to consider the nature of it breaking and being discarded. Since colors like clear, brown and green tends to be "utility glass" it is also more likely to get broken and discarded as a natural part of use. And so, it will get thrown away... finding its way to dumps, some of them by the sea side. Or someone might enjoy a beer at a seaside picnic and toss the bottle in the ocean... and it becomes sea glass.

But people aren't going to have their orange Amberina glass AT the seaside. And if it breaks, out comes the superglue, rather than the trash can. And when an orange turn signal on a car, or a lamp at a road works barrier gets broken, it's going to be on a road somewhere, not on a beach. And that's where part of the rarity comes from. In order for that turn signal to become sea glass, it has to be swept up, put in the trash, that trash hauled to a seaside dump... and then pushed into the ocean, all of which has to have happened during a time before environmental protection laws made it completely illegal to push trash into the ocean.

Two-toned, from "Amberina"

So we have two rarity factors at work, when it comes to orange sea glass: One, orange is simply uncommon, as glass. Two, it's unlikely to be broken somewhere where it will even make it to the beach.

Mixed in here are some of the pieces of orange sea glass I have found, over the years. As you can see, true orange is extremely bright, and quite different from various "golden amber" tones that often get mistaken as being orange.

Finding a piece of orange is a "true treasure" for any sea glass collector.

Orange Sea Glass: The Slow "Extinction" of a Rare Color

Fall beach combing is always a bit of a mixed bag.

On the upside, fall means a couple of things, around here. One, "tourist season" is over, which means the pervasive "overpicking" of our local beaches slowly tapers off. Two, the season winds start picking up again after the doldrums of summer, and occasionally we get a good storm or two which will churn up something more than the top couple of inches on the beach. These are good things, for the sea glass hunter.

On the downside, low tides now occur mostly at "awkward" times-- like 4 o'clock in the morning, when it's pitch black outside. The "windows of opportunity" for the sea glass hunter become smaller and shorter every day, and will continue to shrink until the beginning of the new year.

A couple of days ago, we had a brilliant sunny autumn day, so I decided to "get out there" (for the first time in a couple of months) and take advantage of a retreating tide towards sunset.

As I wandered and started spotting a few pieces of sea glass, I became quite aware of the "truth" of something sea glass enthusiasts often say and hear: That sea glass is a "vanishing treasure." I wrote an article about this recently, but this beach walk really underscored the truth of this statement, particularly as it applies to the rarer colors.

For some years now, I have been blessed to live in a place where there was a nice volume of variety of sea glass-- including rare colors. What I notice most-- as the years roll by-- is the relative absence of anything "rare," these days.

Of course, orange has never been anything but a rare color. It is generally regarded as the single rarest color in sea glass collecting-- although this depends somewhat on who you ask-- and many collectors will beach comb for a lifetime and never find a piece. I've been fortunate to live in a place where I used to be able to find maybe 6-8 pieces of genuine orange sea glass per year.

But that was "then" and this is "now." Orange sea glass-- as well as other "rare" colors-- seems to have become all but "extinct."

As I got towards the end of my beach walk-- after about four hours-- what I noticed was that my bag contained a fair amount of clear, brown and green glass, with a scattering of seafoam... and very little else.

When this little nugget (it's only about 3/8" or 10mm long) suddenly caught the late afternoon sun, it was a very exciting moment. But it also made me realize just how long it had been since I'd found a piece of orange sea glass. And where were the other rare colors? I found no red, no teal, no yellow, no pink, no purple.

Sea glass IS a "vanishing treasure" because we pick it up... and none of it-- especially in "odd" colors-- is being replaced. To the small degree we use commercially produced glass objects, they are rarely made "in colors." These days, we mostly use plastics for such things... glass is reserved for things we can make in "huge volumes." Aside from which, environmental regulations keep most glass off our beaches, so it never really has the opportunity to become sea glass, in the first place.

I feel grateful that I have had the opportunity to be a sea glass collector for so many years... years that happened before it became "too late."

February 2013 Sea Glass Auctions

The February 2013 Sea Glass Auction is now running and accessible to be viewed on eBay.

Once a month, I offer some of my recent beach combings for sale at auction. Because I often-- especially during the spring and summer-- am on the beach up to 15+ days a month, I do tend to end up with more nice quality sea glass than I need for my own collection and projects. It seems only reasonable to me to help it find "new homes" with fellow sea glass enthusiasts, jewelers, artists and crafts people. During some periods of the year, these offerings are fairly modest; at others they are fairly impressive.

This month's offerings consist of 90 new auction listings with sea glass and beach pottery which went "live" on Sunday evening, February 17th. There's a broad mixture of "jewelry lots" as well as better individual pieces and rarities for collectors. There's a particularly nice selection of the popular blue shades, this month.

Click on the link below to see the current selection!

February Auctions: Bid until Sunday, February 24th at 7:00pm Pacific/10:00 Eastern

A sampling of lots that are part of the February 2013 auctions

All auctions were listed more or less "together" so as to end at approximately the same time. I do this in order for the "save on shipping when buying multiple items" option to actually makes sense. I find few things more annoying than eBay sellers who offer "discounted shipping," but never have more than 7 (often unrelated!) items for sale.

The "ending times" happen on Sunday, February 24th at 7:00pm Pacific/10:00pm Eastern time. Closing times for lots are spaced roughly one minute apart, to accommodate those who enjoy "live bidding" on sequential lots.

There is a "buy it now" option with all lots, but please keep in mind that this option does go away the moment someone places a bid.

As stated above, "combined shipping" is available. In spite of eBay's new rules for "trackable shipment," I still only charge $2.95 (in the US) for the first lot and $0.75 for each additional lot. That covers (barely!) the $2.07 for a first class parcel + $0.90 for delivery confirmation, which is now more or less a REQUIREMENT when you sell on eBay.

Odd bits: Doorknobs, drawer pulls, knops and more

Even after 40+ years of beach combing and looking for sea glass, I continue to approach-- and appreciate-- each trip to the beach with child-like enthusiasm.

I still feel happy every time I find even something relatively common... in an unusual shape, or perfect condition, or deeper-than-usual color.

This used to be a drawer pull or cabinet knob

Of course, "odd bits" offer a particular thrill-- in part because of the rarity factor, in part because of the fun of going "What IS that???" and then figuring it out.

I live in a small seaside city of some 10,000 people. What makes beach combing here interesting is that this was a thriving community in the mid- to late 1800s, and 100's of fine old homes were built here, on the expectation that this would become "The San Francisco of the North."

Alas, that never happened-- for a couple of reasons; one being an adequate natural water supply to support the growing population, the other being a decision by the railroad companies not to extend the lines here... and without rail transport to hand shipping cargo, the dreams of a major seaport were dashed.

How does this relate to beach combing?

Many of the old houses fell into disrepair. Some became so derelict they were torn down for safety reasons (in the 1930's to 1950's)... and the debris was bulldozed into the ocean; basically "thrown over the edge" of seaside escarpments to be taken away by the tides. Contained in that debris were the fixtures used in bygone eras in nice houses: glass and porcelain doorknobs, drawer pulls, chandeliers and more. And, in time, they became a very special form of sea glass.

A conical drawer pull-- the "inside" is hollow, for the attachment

Over the years, I have found a wide range of unusual artifacts around here. I have beach combed in many different places around the US and the world... and whereas I may have found tens of thousands of pieces of glass there, this is the first time I have lived in a place where it was possibly to find the sea polished remains of old building debris.

I find at least a couple of glass doorknobs, every year. They are not as interesting, visually, as they tend to have worn down to where they are just very large, very thick circular pieces of sea glass, sometimes with one side (the side that would have face inwards, towards the door) flat or slightly concave. The cabinet knobs and drawer pulls are more interesting-- a lot more variety of shape and size. Old crystals from chandeliers are relatively rare-- they were usually made of lead crystal, which is relatively soft... and tends to wear away much faster in the ocean. I can usually recognize them by the "teardrop" shape and the glass being uncommonly "white" in appearance.

January 2013 Sea Glass Auctions

The January 2013 Sea Glass Auction is now running and accessible to all on eBay.

Once a month, I like to offer some of my beach combings for sale at auction. Because I often-- especially during the spring and summer-- am on the beach up to 15+ days a month, I do tend to end up with more nice quality sea glass than I need for my own collection and projects. It seems only reasonable to me to help it find "new homes" with fellow sea glass enthusiasts, jewelers, artists and crafts people. During some periods of the year, these offerings are fairly modest; at others they are fairly impressive. Click on the link below to see the current selection!

January Auctions: Bid until Sunday January 27th, 7:00pm Pacific/10:00pm Eastern

115 new auction listings with sea glass and beach pottery went "live" on Sunday evening, January 20th. There's a broad mixture of "jewelry lots" as well as better individual pieces and rarities for collectors. This selection is actually the largest I have had on eBay since 2009, and the quality is very nice! In addition, there are another 50+ new lots coming to the store later this week, for immediate purchase.

A sampling of the sea glass available in the January auctions. Click on the image to see a larger version!

All auctions were listed more or less "together" so as to end at approximately the same time. I do this in order for the "save on shipping when buying multiple items" option actually makes sense. I find few things more annoying than eBay sellers who offer "discounted shipping," but never have more than 7 (often unrelated!) items for sale.

The "end times" start on Sunday, January 27th at 7:00pm Pacific/10:00pm Eastern time. Closing times for lots are spaced roughly one minute apart, to accommodate those who enjoy "live bidding" on sequential lots.

There is a "buy it now" option with all lots, but please keep in mind that this option does go away the moment someone places a bid.

As stated above, "combined shipping" is available. In spite of eBay's new rules for "trackable shipment," I still only charge $2.95 (in the US) for the first lot and $0.75 for each additional lot. That covers (barely!) the $2.07 for a first class parcel + $0.90 for delivery confirmation, which is now more or less a REQUIREMENT when you sell on eBay.

If you'd like to keep up with my monthly sea glass auctions, I recommend that you use one of the "subscribe" options, in the right hand column.

Odd Bits: Sea Glass Beads

When people think about sea glass, the idea that comes to mind is typically that some glass object-- let's say a bottle or storage jar-- broke and ended up in the ocean. With time-- and the abrasive effect of water, sand and rocks-- the sharp pieces of glass became the softly rounded and frosted gems we now call "sea glass."

Opaque yellow sea glass bead

However, not all sea glass started as "sharp broken shards of glass."

Today, I'll take a look at a type of sea glass that typically did NOT start as "broken glass," namely sea glass BEADS.

Beads-- as sea glass-- tend to be fairly rare. For one, beads are usually pretty small, so they can be hard to spot, when you are beach combing. In addition, since they are small, it doesn't take a whole lot of rough surf and being beaten against rocks before they completely wear away.

The good news about beads as sea glass is that when you DO find them, they are typically in "whole" condition-- this is not a shape that usually suffers a lot of breakage. Of course, that doesn't automatically mean that they can be used for jewelry, since most tend to have small rocks and grains of sand lodged in the original hole (see photos)-- and these can sometimes be impossible to dislodge, without breaking the bead.

Very rare squared bright green bead

How do beads become sea glass? Usually, they can only be found in places where there were trash dumps on the coast. Sea glass beads usually started as inexpensive glass jewelry that got thrown away when the string in a bracelet or necklace broke and it was too much hassle to fix it. The individual person's garbage made its way to the city/town dump by the seaside, and then ended up in the ocean... after which the process of it "becoming sea glass" is exactly the same as any other form of sea glass.

Most sea glass beads have very humble and "common" origins. A great "treasure" for a sea glass hunter would be to find a "sea glassed" antique trade bead, made in Venice... and perhaps used for trade in Africa or Asia. Since these can cost several dollars each from bead stores, they are very unlikely to have been discarded.

As stated above, sea glass beads are quite rare. And they are getting rarer, because they are one of the few kinds of "discarded glass" that was almost always processed through a trash dump-- and since trash is no longer thrown in the ocean as a means of disposal, there are really no more sea glass beads being created.

A rare deep turquoise bead

Relatively speaking, "color rarity" is completely different with sea glass beads, than with other forms of sea glass. If you think about it, the most common colors used for glass casual/costume jewelry are completely different from the most common colors used for glass, in general. In my personal collection, otherwise very rare red is actually the most common sea glass bead color. Green-- which is common "in general"-- is quite rare, when it comes to beads.

I say "relatively speaking," because no matter what color it may be, a sea glass bead is something I only find as maybe 1-in-5000 pieces of sea glass, overall. In the course of 40-odd years, I have only collected only maybe 25-30 whole beads, and at least half of them were tiny round opaque reds ("seed beads")-- some of which I almost didn't pick up at all, because I was thinking "no, that's just TOO small for anyone to care about."

As an interesting aside, I actually had several beads in my sea glass collection for years without knowing they were beads. I had collected them and decided they were just "a small piece of round glass with a grain of sand embedded at one end." Had I taken the time to hold them up to the light, I would have noticed they had a hole running all the way through them! I bet I am not the only sea glass collector who has had an experience like that.

Red sea glass bead. Note the sand in the hole.

There are no particular ways to find sea glass beads, when you are beach combing. The main thing to keep in mind is that these are so small they are often overlooked.

Looking at Colors: Red

For many sea glass lovers, "finding a piece of red sea glass" can be the highlight of a beach combing trip. For some, it can even be the highlight of the entire year, or an entire beach combing career.

Red is, indeed, both very rare and quite beautiful-- and it is perhaps this combination of scarcity and beauty that makes it particularly sought after. But just to "put the record straight," though-- Red is NOT "the rarest sea glass color." That said, it is commonly estimated that a beach comber will have to pick up between 3000 and 5000 pieces of sea glass to find one piece of red. In addition, red glass (due to its chemical composition) tends to be "softer" and more "brittle" than many other colors of glass, and thus even when a collector does find a piece of red, the piece is often quite small, and not necessarily in nice smoothly frosted condition.

So, what's the story with red glass?

For starters, red simply isn't a color that has been used very often, for commercial glassware. There are a couple of reasons for this: Red glass is costly to make, and difficult to work with. And, ultimately, "difficult to work with" also drives up the cost of making red glass objects.

As I have written in other posts, colored glass is typically the result of adding metals and minerals (in oxide and chloride-- powder-- form) to sand and silica mix that is glass before it is molten. The simplest way to obtain a medium to deep red glass color is by adding gold-- in powder form. And, at $100s per ounce, this has generally not been an economically viable proposition for glass manufacturers. As often as not, when we run into red glass in an antique store, it is more likely to be "art" glass than manufacturer production glass.

Because of the cost of using gold, alternatives have been explored. Most successfully, highly purified iron and cupric oxide has been used. However, new challenges arose.

Some years ago, I was proprietor of an art gallery, and one of our specialties was blown art glass from small studios and individual artists. In the course of ten years or so, I got to know a lot of glass blowers-- and often noticed the absence of deep red glass in their work.

Knowing that there were alternatives to using gold for red glass, I asked "why no red?" And learned that even though there are non-gold options to make red glass, they can only be used in extremely controlled furnace environments. The raw materials have to be extremely pure and highly processed-- and that quickly becomes expensive. One glass artist described red glass as "too temperamental," explaining that he could make a "pot" of red glass, but if the furnace got just 10 degrees too hot he'd "end up with brown soup." Keep in mind what it might take to calibrate in 10-degree increments in the context of glass having a melting point of 2700 degrees Fahrenheit. I also learned that red glass-- in its molten state-- is extremely corrosive and damages the "pots" used in the furnaces, meaning that they have to be replaced more often than when working with most other colors.

As an example (again, returning to my days at the art gallery), in 1987 major Finnish glass manufacturer iittala decided to commemorate the 50th anniversary of their world famous "Aalto" glass vase by making a special limited edition in deep red. The original intent was that the edition size was to be 1000 signed and numbered pieces worldwide. After extensive experimentation and numerous failures, the edition size was cut short to just one hundred pieces, due to "manufacturing difficulties."

Red sea glass, as beach combers might find it, comes from a very limited number of sources. Some can be traced to automotive tail lights and lenses from warning lamps and ships' lanterns-- most often, these pieces have some kind of texture on one side, put their to increasing the reflectivity of the lens. A small amount comes from Victorian- to Depression-era production and decorative glass, with a few other pieces coming from decorative art glass. Finally, a tiny amount of commercially produced red glass (most often made by Anchor-Hocking in the 1950's) might show up "locally" in various parts of the US, for example from one particular type of Schlitz beer made during the 50s. In all cases, very limited quantities were made... and red was often the color chosen for various "special" or "limited edition" objects.

As an interesting aside, red glass was often used as "tiny accents." For example, when I look at sea glass "objects" such as buttons or beads (which in and of themselves are rare to find), red is a relatively "common" occurrence. Perhaps a full one-quarter of the sea glass beads I have found have been red... but it's very much a "relative" thing, as the chances of finding any sea glass bead is maybe 1-in-2000! Although beads are not exactly rare, most are never picked up because of their tiny size-- beach combers see a piece of glass less than 1/4" in diameter and think "why bother?" not realizing that the tiny round piece has a hole through it, making it a miniature treasure.

"Cranberry Glass" as sea glass

I am occasionally asked why there is not more "cranberry glass" found as sea glass. People point out that when you go to an antique mall (for example) there is far more cranberry glass-- essentially a "pinkish/purplish" red-- than pure red glass. Most likely, the answer lies in how glass is used, and how we-- as "consumers"-- treat the glass we have around us. Whereas cranberry glass was made on a fairly large scale during the first half of the 20th century, it mostly was made into decorative objects. As such, relatively little of it was actually broken, and subsequently very little of it found its way to trash dumps. The same is true of colors such a deep amethyst and bright orange, which was used for decorative objects but is extremely rare as sea glass. Think about it, for a moment: If you chip a glass canning jar, what happens? You throw it away. If you chip your favorite cranberry glass vase, what happens? Unless it's seriously broken, you probably try to fix it. Or leave it out, with the chip facing the wall...

The bottom line is that most sea glass-- probably 99% of it-- comes from commercial glassware. That is, glassware that "contained" something, and/or was "used" for something... after which its utility ended, and it was discarded.

Whatever its origins, red glass is definitely a "treasure" for a sea glass collector, as well as for the few jewelry artists who are bold enough to use it in their work.

To see more photos of red sea glass (and I have many!), please visit my Red Sea Glass Photo Album on Flickr.