Finding your marbles

A perfect market is a utopian ideal of economists. In such a market, accurate information is instantly available to all, there are no barriers to trade, participants may be buyers or sellers, and there are no middlemen. But it is generally accepted that such perfection cannot exist in practice — the concept is merely a useful theoretical construct. However, I believe that the game of marbles as played at the Dragon School in Oxford in the 1950s came very close to being just such a perfect market.

The game was played by eight- to 12-year-old boys. Boys could choose to be either sellers or buyers and could instantly change from one to the other. The currency of the game was the titch, the smallest common marble available (more formally a titch semi), and all more valuable marbles were described as being worth ‘25 titch’, ‘48 titch’, etc. To play the game, a seller would set out a ‘show’, the most common of which was a titch pyramid, consisting of three titch arranged in a triangle with a fourth balanced on top, and would inscribe a chalk circle around the show. He would also inscribe a line on the ground at about one large pace from the titch pyramid. To play the game a buyer, having first selected which of the many shows to choose from would ‘roll up’. He would stand feet apart behind the line, and selecting a titch from his marble bag would bend down and take careful aim, usually swinging his right hand several times back and forth between his legs before launching his titch at the show. Normally marblers would hold their left hand behind their backs while thus engaged, but, as with all sports, there were as many styles as participants. In particular some would throw with a straight-arm swing, while others would use a flick of the wrist and a partly bent elbow.