Children's treasures. Stained glass balls with a diameter of about two centimeters. Blue, green and brown balls were considered the most valuable. When they fell, the balls did not break, they only broke off pieces.
One of the main advantages of the balls was the mystery of their origin.

The balls were either found or accepted as a gift. There were several versions of the “official” purpose and origin of the balls:
1. The balls were in aerosol cans, from where they were extracted by craftsmen;
2. Balls were a method of transporting glass in containers, particularly during rail transportation.
Glass marbles served as children's currency in exchange relationships. They were also worn as talismans and, of course, used for games. There were no special rules of the game, like in the West. You just had to successfully click your fingers on your ball so that it would knock the opponent’s ball off the “field.”
Glass beads were also used by adults: in chemical institutes (to displace air from test tubes), for interior decoration (the beads were “soldered” into the walls), and to decorate aquariums.

The following are remarks from various “nostalgic” forums:
We had an airfield nearby and they said, and there was such a legend of their origin: when the plane takes off, from the friction of the landing gear on the asphalt and the enormous temperature, the asphalt and all sorts of dust and dirt on it melt and then turn glassy.
And my older brother brought these balls from the glass factory - he and his friends climbed over the fence and filled their pockets with them. They said that there were a dime a dozen of these balls, lying everywhere. I had a lot of green ones, one red one and my favorite - blue.
I remember the whole yard went out onto the railway to search for these balls. They were found quite rarely and with great joy. And for us, such balls were “freely convertible currency”... and there were exchange rates... Colorless - the cheapest, dark green - 1 piece = 10 colorless, blue and milky white - at least 20 pieces transparent. We rolled these balls into holes. Whoever is the most accurate takes all the wealth
We had the following theory for the origin of these balls: at the film studio, during filming, they used them to depict especially sparkling treasures, and then, of course, they ended up in our yard somehow...
And the police came to our school and asked us to hand over glass balls, allegedly they were poisonous. I just don’t think anyone would send the police to conduct conversations in every classroom. Of course, no one handed it over.... But maybe radioactive waste was transported this way? We found them on railway, colors of all shades of blue and green.
The main and original purpose of these glass balls is TATTING. Or rather, the balls themselves are tumbling bodies.
Tumbling bodies are used in the processing of measuring, medical and plumbing tools; parts of cars, motorcycles, bicycles, watches; cutlery; turbine blades; propellers; gears; hardware; hardware; ferrites; porcelain insulators; sanitary fittings; chains; cutlery; buttons; prosthetic parts; furniture, shoes, etc. metal fittings and much more.
Tumbling bodies are used as a filler when processing parts to remove burrs, rust, scale, blunt edges, reduce roughness, surface hardening:
in rotating drums of various types (rotary, cantilever, sealed, perforated, planetary, etc.); in vibrating containers, where instead of rotation, vibration is used in 2 or 3 directions, which ensures the processing of fragile and small parts without damage.

Glass beads are molded spherical products made by boiling quartz sand, fluorspar, limestone, alumina, boric acid, etc. in a glass melting furnace at high temperature. Glass beads are made with a diameter of 22 ± 1 mm. They contain boron oxide (B2O3), the mass percentage of which is at least 7%. In terms of physical and chemical properties, glass beads are not toxic, explosive, or flammable. These neutral characteristics allow glass beads to be used quite widely. Glass beads are a semi-finished product, the starting material for the production of glass fibers for various purposes, the production of woven and non-woven fibers. Glass beads are also used for the dispersion of solid and liquid bodies (especially often in bead mills). Soft Big-Bag containers are used as packaging for glass beads, intended for transporting and storing bulk cargo.

Our people have a military secret - it's from Malchish-Kibalchish. And there is a peaceful secret - this is the Great Mystery of Glass Balls. Yes, yes, those same heavy, transparent, approximately two-centimeter ones that we valued in childhood no less than scarce toys.

Nowadays, similar balls - of different sizes and literally of all colors and shades - are used for design. I poured it into a vase and decorated the shelf. And now you can buy them at every step - as much as you want, even a ton. Well, it’s completely uninteresting, no intrigue! It’s either our business, the bastards. With them everything was not so simple at all!..

What a glass ball is does not need to be explained to any Soviet child. This is the most valuable movable property. Like diamonds, only much cooler. Because sheer pleasure for all senses!

The ball is pleasing to the touch because it has an amazingly pleasant - as adults would say - texture. It combines magical transparency and powerful heaviness. And the smooth surface resembles a candy cane. But how massive and strong they are, these lollipops! Experiments by young researchers to determine the level of strength of the ball showed: if you drop it from a height, it will not seem like much... The surface on which you drop it. And the ball itself deserves some henna. Even though it’s made of glass, it’s not just any glass! Well, at most it will break away from him a little.

Vision is also not left behind. You look into such a thing, into the mysterious bubbles and cracks inside - and some kind of lunar craters, Martian geysers and, in general, entire fantastic worlds are drawn before your eyes... But the balls are not only completely transparent, but also slightly colored. Most often they are greenish, but there are also blue ones and other shades. The rarer the more valuable, of course. It’s especially cool to look at the white light through them!

“People’s diamonds” also delight children’s ears. Because when they collide, they make a cool sound: boom. And they roll around on the parquet with this: trrrrrrr. Remember the sacred question that made many residents of prefabricated houses rack their brains: what are these strange sounds from the neighbors above, as if something heavy was being rolled along the floor? Maybe it was them, my dears!

Why you need a glass ball is also no secret, except for slow-witted adults.

Firstly, holding them, examining, touching, smelling and rolling them is pure unselfish joy, see above.

Secondly, you can play with them in every possible way. For example, for accuracy, roll into a hole. Or, again, knocking each other into each other on the floor or on the windowsill. You can exchange for other interesting things. And you feel like a real millionaire when you win or exchange so much that your pockets sag forever, and you have to take off your T-shirt to transport your wealth. This is called “weighty, rough, visible”!

And finally, they attract, like everything incomprehensible. More on this below.

The question “where do glass marbles come from” is an even more interesting and intriguing topic. This is where opinions begin to differ.

"I pulled them out of aerosol cans!" - some assure. “What size and weight should the cylinder be if there is such a ball in there...” - skeptical interlocutors think.

“It’s very simple: they are collected on the railway tracks!” others say. “On the rails and around them - that’s where this stuff is scattered.”

“And we found these at construction sites!” - say others.

“And we are in the forest!..” - the fourth ones themselves are perplexed...

Near the airfield, near the film studio, around various enterprises - yes, it’s easier to say in which places they were NOT found!

A logical question arises, of course: in what way and for what purposes did glass beads come into being? It’s unlikely that adults produced them and scattered them around solely to please us children...

Proponents of the concept of aerosol cans believed that “they were put in there so that the contents would not thicken.”

Proponents of the “railroad” theory believed that any glass that had to be transported from point A to point B was given a spherical shape, because it was more convenient to transport it this way: there were no sharp corners that could damage and cut everything around.

The child's mind has generated more than one interesting version. For example: that the balls are part of the train's braking system, and they are thrown out when the train slows down. A child’s imagination may not come up with such things, yeah. And aliens send them to Earth as gifts.

Those former ball lovers and ball collectors who retained an inquisitive mind as adults decided to approach the issue seriously, scientifically. And this is what studies conducted at fiberglass production plants showed...

“Glass beads are molded spherical products made by boiling quartz sand, fluorspar, limestone, alumina, boric acid, etc. in a glass melting furnace at high temperature... Glass beads are a semi-finished product, the starting material for the production of glass fibers for various purposes, the production of woven and non-woven fibers".

So they rolled them back and forth by rail for a reason, but as a valuable raw material! They were transporting it to production to produce fiber. Just imagine this. As some people who are disappointed by this explanation write, “well, childhood is over.”

But no, it’s not over at all! Because raw materials are raw materials, fiberglass is fiberglass, transportation is transportation - and that’s why these spherical semi-finished products were discovered by the children’s population in the most diverse and most unexpected places of our vast Motherland - from a construction site to a forest edge? This is where scientific interpretations retreat, embarrassed and disgraced - and we again joyfully enter the world of mystery. Maybe these things really have extraterrestrial origins, huh? We won't be surprised!

Why are glass balls needed anyway? We tried to solve this riddle as children... The answer is simple!

Children's treasures. Stained glass balls with a diameter of about two centimeters. Blue, green and brown balls were considered the most valuable. When they fell, the balls did not break, they only broke off pieces.

One of the main advantages of the balls was the mystery of their origin.

The balls were either found or accepted as a gift. There were several versions of the “official” purpose and origin of the balls:
1. The balls were in aerosol cans, from where they were extracted by craftsmen;
2. Balls were a method of transporting glass in containers, particularly during rail transportation.

Glass marbles served as children's currency in exchange relationships. They were also worn as talismans and, of course, used for games. There were no special rules of the game, like in the West. You just had to successfully click your fingers on your ball so that it would knock the opponent’s ball off the “field.”

Glass beads were also used by adults: in chemical institutes (to displace air from test tubes), for interior decoration (the beads were “soldered” into the walls), and to decorate aquariums.

The main and original purpose of these glass balls is TATTING. Or rather, the balls themselves are tumbling bodies.

Tumbling bodies are used in the processing of measuring, medical and plumbing tools; parts of cars, motorcycles, bicycles, watches; cutlery; turbine blades; propellers; gears; hardware; hardware; ferrites; porcelain insulators; sanitary fittings; chains; cutlery; buttons; prosthetic parts; furniture, shoes, etc. metal fittings and much more.

Tumbling bodies are used as a filler when processing parts to remove burrs, rust, scale, blunt edges, reduce roughness, surface hardening:

in rotating drums of various types (rotary, cantilever, sealed, perforated, planetary, etc.); in vibrating containers, where instead of rotation, vibration is used in 2 or 3 directions, which ensures the processing of fragile and small parts without damage.

Glass beads are molded spherical products made by boiling quartz sand, fluorspar, limestone, alumina, boric acid, etc. in a glass melting furnace at high temperature. Glass beads are made with a diameter of 22 ± 1 mm. They contain boron oxide (B2O3), the mass percentage of which is at least 7%. According to their physical and chemical properties, glass beads are not toxic, explosive, or flammable.

These neutral characteristics allow glass beads to be used quite widely. Glass beads are a semi-finished product, the starting material for the production of glass fibers for various purposes, the production of woven and non-woven fibers. Glass beads are also used for the dispersion of solids and liquids (especially often in bead mills). Soft Big-Bag containers intended for transportation and storage of bulk cargo are used as packaging for glass beads.

Children's treasures. Stained glass balls with a diameter of about two centimeters. Blue, green and brown balls were considered the most valuable. When they fell, the balls did not break, they only broke off pieces.

One of the main advantages of the balls was the mystery of their origin.

The balls were either found or accepted as a gift. There were several versions of the “official” purpose and origin of the balls:
1. The balls were in aerosol cans, from where they were extracted by craftsmen;
2. Balls were a method of transporting glass in containers, particularly during rail transportation.

Glass marbles served as children's currency in exchange relationships. They were also worn as talismans and, of course, used for games. There were no special rules of the game, like in the West. You just had to successfully click your fingers on your ball so that it would knock the opponent’s ball off the “field.”

Glass beads were also used by adults: in chemical institutes (to displace air from test tubes), for interior decoration (the beads were “soldered” into the walls), and to decorate aquariums.

The main and original purpose of these glass balls is TATTING. Or rather, the balls themselves are tumbling bodies.

Tumbling bodies are used in the processing of measuring, medical and plumbing tools; parts of cars, motorcycles, bicycles, watches; cutlery; turbine blades; propellers; gears; hardware; hardware; ferrites; porcelain insulators; sanitary fittings; chains; cutlery; buttons; prosthetic parts; furniture, shoes, etc. metal fittings and much more.

Tumbling bodies are used as a filler when processing parts to remove burrs, rust, scale, blunt edges, reduce roughness, surface hardening:

in rotating drums of various types (rotary, cantilever, sealed, perforated, planetary, etc.); in vibrating containers, where instead of rotation, vibration is used in 2 or 3 directions, which ensures the processing of fragile and small parts without damage.

Glass beads are molded spherical products made by boiling quartz sand, fluorspar, limestone, alumina, boric acid, etc. in a glass melting furnace at high temperature. Glass beads are made with a diameter of 22 ± 1 mm. They contain boron oxide (B2O3), the mass percentage of which is at least 7%. According to their physical and chemical properties, glass beads are not toxic, explosive, or flammable.

These neutral characteristics allow glass beads to be used quite widely. Glass beads are a semi-finished product, the starting material for the production of glass fibers for various purposes, the production of woven and non-woven fibers. Glass beads are also used for the dispersion of solids and liquids (especially often in bead mills). Soft Big-Bag containers intended for transportation and storage of bulk cargo are used as packaging for glass beads.

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This is what I found... Finally, the secret of the origin of the magic glass balls from my (apparently not only mine:) childhood was revealed. I never believed in their alien origin, although I remember that sometimes they were called with a hint - “moon balls”. I found them in a completely incomprehensible way at the dacha in the grass, by the road. This puzzled me somewhat and the balls in my eyes turned into a real treasure. I only came across white ones, always with a crack, but strong. It was great to twirl them in your hands, try to see what was inside, or look through them at the sun, or show them to each other (I wasn’t the only one who was so lucky), and just store them in a box :)). It all seemed that they had some wonderful properties, but for some reason these properties simply had not yet manifested themselves. I have one somewhere at home (the rest, I think, were stolen by envious people; I once saved up as many as 3 pieces).
In general, here is an article (already old) about them. Taken from here.

Remember colored glass balls with a diameter of about two centimeters?

Blue, green and brown balls were considered the most valuable. When they fell, the balls did not break, they only broke off pieces.

One of the main advantages of the balls was the mystery of their origin. The balls were either found or accepted as a gift. There were several versions of the “official” purpose and origin of the balls:

1. The balls were in aerosol cans, from where they were extracted by craftsmen;

2. Balls were a method of transporting glass in containers, particularly during rail transportation.

Glass marbles served as children's currency in exchange relationships. They were also worn as talismans and, of course, used for games.

Glass beads were also used by adults: in chemical research institutes (to displace air from test tubes), for interior decoration (the beads were “soldered” into the walls), and for decorating aquariums.

The purpose of the balls remained a mystery to me until 1999.

Everything was put into place by field practice with a visit to the Novopolotsk fiberglass manufacturing plant.

Glass beads are molded spherical products made by boiling quartz sand, fluorspar, limestone, alumina, boric acid, etc. in a glass melting furnace at high temperature.

Glass beads are made with a diameter of 22 ± 1 mm. They contain boron oxide (B2O3), the mass percentage of which is at least 7%.

According to their physical and chemical properties, glass beads are not toxic, explosive, or flammable. These neutral characteristics allow glass beads to be used quite widely.

Glass beads are a semi-finished product, the starting material for the production of glass fibers for various purposes, the production of woven and non-woven fibers. Glass beads are also used for the dispersion of solids and liquids (especially often in bead mills).

Soft Big-Bag containers intended for transportation and storage of bulk cargo are used as packaging for glass beads.

That's it - childhood is over.