What types of damage can a marble have?
A number of terms are bandied about when it comes to describing the condition of a marble, and some I do not use so will not discuss them here. These include “flea bites” and “chigger bites,” and the like. There are two basic categories of damage that can occur on a marble. These are surface damage and subsurface damage. Keep in mind that many of these terms are appropriate only for glass marbles, but since 99% of you will only seriously collect such orbs, I’ll limit the discussion to glass. Of course, non-glass material can have the same types of damage in most cases. Let’s begin with surface damage, since that is going to be the most prominent. Chips are left when pieces of material are broken away from the marble. They tend to be large and deep, and are often angular. Chip Flakes are generally more shallow and, as the name suggests, are bits of material that have been flaked away. They can be large but for the most part are small. Flake Pinpricks are what they sound like: pin-point
