Childhood secrets are hiding in the dirt. Months after crops are harvested and fields stripped to bare brown, the slanted rays of morning or evening sunlight fire large circular patterns of crushed ...

Jamie Wickliffe turns on his torch lamp and in a rush a neon blue flame appears. He dips a glass rod into the flame and a small orange fireball appears, looking like a comet shooting through space.

”When I showed people the marbles I kept in my jewelry box, they laughed,” said Beverly Brule, of Marble Collectors Unlimited in Northboro, Mass. ”A couple of years ago, when you asked an antiques ...