Legendary Lee Batterton, the 89-year-old man with a million marbles

YORK, Neb. — Lee’s Legendary Marbles is a small brick building in southeast Nebraska home to more than a million marbles and one 89-year-old man named Lee Batterton.

He started collecting marbles in backyard shooting competitions as a boy in Deer Creek, Okla., about 300 miles south of here. Each kid back in the 1930s carried a bag, and the victor walked away with a new marble or two. Batterton was a very good shot, so his collection swelled.

But dozens didn’t turn to thousands until his work as a grain elevator repairman landed him in Germany, which has been the hub of handmade marbles for hundreds of years. Onionskin, Lutz, mica, guinea. Batterton couldn’t get enough.

“Everyone went out to the bars,” he said, “and I went looking for marbles.”

He opened his store and museum in 2001, and still runs it eight hours a day, seven days a week. Unless, of course, there is a marble show nearby. In that case, he will pack his car to the brim with marbles and head off with the intention of selling some of his collection, though his recent trip to Minnesota resulted in two new additions to his lot.

This afternoon, he shuffled from case to case, unlocking each finicky glass door with a set of keys, like a jeweler. Some marbles in his collection sell for hundreds of dollars, others for thousands. His bright white flashlight settled on a pale yellow set and it flashed into a startling neon green.

“Radioactive uranium,” he mumbled casually.

Batterton moves onward to another part of the room where a group of milky white marbles — he calls them moonies — sit on a suede pad. Sure enough, in the beam of his light, a tiny golden circle glows within the sphere, just like the moon in the night sky.

When it was time to go, I asked Batterton to pick me out a marble for the road. He gravitated toward a collection made by a local Nebraska man. They’re rare, the man only produced one run.

Batterton carefully plucked out a sphere 3 centimeters in diameter. With a shaky hand and discerning eye, he held it up to the light and twirled it between his fingers. The marble’s surface was marked by a swirling white cloud, a river of yellow speckled with emerald, and islands of indigo and peach.

“Now this is a good one,” he said. And for a moment I could see the sparkle of a young boy winning his first marble back in Oklahoma a lifetime ago.

Join the discussion: Comment on this story.