Hi Everyone!

I go bowling only occasionally, so I don't really know much about bowling balls. I have always rented my equipment. Anyway, today at work we had to clean this cellar (which really just meant that we were supposed to throw everything to the waste container) and there i found this bowling ball. I thought it looked nice so i took it home. The balls weight was also pretty good for me and my fingers fit the holes pretty well, maybe I'll even use it sometime.

I already know that the ball is made in the US by Roto Grip. On the surface of the ball reads "Blue Star" and "Ace". My quess is that "Ace" is the model and "Blue star" refers to the colour but I'm not sure so hopefully you can tell me more about this ball. It would be also nice to know how old it is.

Here's a picture of it!



Thanks! 

I think Armourboy is correct.  I had to log on to get a better size view of the picture and from that, it is made by Ace.  I remember seeing a few Ace balls in the early 70's or late '60s but all of the ones I saw were black rubber but they had the Ace of Spades symbol on them.   I think someone just put that ball in a handy box that happened to be a Roto box.

Unless someone happened to own a ball like that one, you probably will have a difficult time getting more info on it.  I doubt that it is on any of the ball review websites since most of them started in the '90s and info on the real early balls ('70s or earlier) is hard to find (but most of them were rubber and had no 'real' cores, maybe just pancake).

Armourboy, Ace Supreme:

http://123bowl.com/ball.cfm?ballid=1400

I could not look at your Facebook pics but from your description, not the same as the above link.

BTW, like the info on Ace as I did not know anything about them other than their logo.

 but my dads is an old Hard Rubber ball which is a different type of logo, although its still the spade.

The ones I remember seeing were all black rubber balls with a solid white Ace Of Spades logo.

Ok I got another picture of a couple of other balls  I have, One is my dad's Ace Limited, the other is an Ace Pro seen here:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=590292560993092&set=a.236630996359252.59616.100000370600381&type=3&theater

The neat thing about the limited apparently is that the logo is not a sticker according to my mom. She said she worked there for a while and that limited logo is essentially a pin, its not etched in or a sticker. She said she used to put them in, which was neat to find out. The Pro according to Dad would basically be a house ball today.


According to my Dad they still made bowling balls until the late 80's maybe early 90's. They produced balls for both Ebonite and Brunswick up until that point apparently as well, but from what I can tell it was all plastic.

Apparently they were fairly expensive balls at the time with my dads costing roughly 35 dollars in 1971. Mom said hers was slightly cheaper being it was plastic and not hard rubber. You can see the core material I was talking about earlier and found out that the Hard rubber was a shell just like the plastic.

My Dad also said as far as he ever knew, the plant in Booneville, Arkansas was the only plant that ever made bowling balls, so if you have one, thats where it came from. He said the company made a ton of money, but that eventually their quality got to be so bad they were tossing as many as they were selling. Apparently they had far more orders than they could ever make and it caused huge issues and eventually led to their demise. He said they were hugely popular in Japan, with just about as many being sold there as in the states.


Dad said mine and a few others he's going to look for were ones picked out specifically by my grandfather because of their balance when they closed the place up. He said they literally buried thousands of them, and people even took them home for things like doorstops, and he said he even saw someone use them to make flower beds.

Basically they couldn't keep up with demand, and when the Pro's started wanting exact certain measurements and stuff they just got a bad name in the industry.

Thanks for all that info .. may sound crazy but I remember that ACE label! Not that I owned or threw one but I remember it!

No problem! Its been interesting because tbh its always something I've wanted to know about as well. I've looked at those bowling balls since I was a kid and didn't know much about the history either.

I really wish my dad and I had the same span and finger size because I would throw his just to see what happened. He says he has another one undrilled somewhere though so I may get to eventually

Wow thanks a lot! Didn't really expect this many replies and this much info, but thanks again!!

You get lucky sometimes. I just happened to join the site month or so ago. I've never seen one used or talked about outside my family, so I always  assumed it was just some redneck thing from Arkansas