OUR HISTORY AND VISION

Block's Marble Auctions has been serving the marble collecting community since 1989.

Our marble auctions were originally run as Block's Box Absentee Marble Auctions. Block's Box was the partnership of Stanley Block and Robert Block. Stan was the founder of the Marble Collectors Society of America in 1975 and served as it's Chairman for 40 years. He is a Schiffer Publishing author having written Marble Mania and a series of books on Handmade Marbles. Stan began collecting marbles in the 1960s and Block's Box was originally a mail-order marble dealer. Bob is the author of numerous books for Schiffer Publishing including Marbles: Identification and Price Guide. He has been collecting marbles since the mid-1970s. Bob has been the Chairman of the Marble Collectors Society of America since 2016.

Stan and Bob began Block's Box Absentee Marble Auctions after attending several on-site auctions and realizing there was a better way to get marbles into the hands of collectors unable to travel to auctions. Block's Box Absentee Marble Auctions was the first mail-order catalogue and videocatalogue marble auction. In time it was joined by several competitors. Block's Box ran 4 to 6 auctions a year and the catalogues and videocatalogues of those auctions can still be found on eBay and in marble collections. In 1999, Bob began running online chatroom auctions on the internet. The auctions were run as A Chip Off The Old Block Marble CyberAuctions. Auctions were held 4 times a week in a live chatroom format, first on AOL and then in IRC. These were the first regularly scheduled live online auction of any collectible. In 2006 Bob began running live auctions as The AuctionBlocks on the EbayLiveAuctions platform, later on iCollector and finally on LiveAuctioneers. These continued for a number of years. Bob has also been auctioning marbles since 1997 on Ebay. At the onset of the Covid pandemic, the various Block's Marble Auction companies had conducted 1,121 catalogued marble auctions, selling hundreds of thousands lots of marbles and generating millions of dollars in winning bids. After a hiatus due to a move and the Covid pandemic, we began our online marble auctions again. These are held monthly utilizing our online auction platform.

Over the past thirty years we have provided comprehensive services for every level of consignor and buyer. 

Stan passed away in 2020. Bob's interest in marble collecting is as keen now as it was 45 years ago. Bob can still remember being taken by Stan and Claire to the Woodbury and Brimfield flea markets as they searched for marbles in the late 1960s . They used to give him a dime to spend for the entire day. More than five decades later, Bob is still every bit as passionate about marble collecting as you are.

This passion extends not only to his ownership and management of Block's Marble Auctions, but the continued health of the hobby of marble collecting. He has a close relationship with many of the field's top collectors. Whether identifying a marble for a collector, answering a consignor's routine question, personally inspecting an auction item for a bidder, or discussing the intricacies of how marbles were made, the owner of Block's Marble Auctions has always been, and will continue to be, available to you. Bob's favorite aspect of the business is meeting fellow collectors. To that end, the vast majority of consignment pick-ups are performed by Bob himself - traveling thousands of miles each year to meet with as many Block's Marble Auctions customers as possible.

More than 50 years ago, when Stan began selling marbles through Block's Box, his motto was "Satisfaction Unconditionally Guaranteed". That goal is as important to us today as it was to Stan back then. Through the many changes in selling format, large and small, over last three decades, this guiding principle has always remained in force.

By respecting the needs and wishes of both buyers and sellers, and treating all parties fairly and honestly at every point of the transaction, Block's Marble Auctions has succeeded in continuing to be a respected source for marbles around the world.