Someone misplaced their marbles? Barnes Wallis’s daughter condemns fakes being offered because the toys that impressed her father’s ‘bouncing bomb’

The 93-year-old daughter of Dambusters inventor Sir Barnes Wallis has found herself in the middle of a ‘fake or fortune’ row.

When Elisabeth Gaunt decided to sell the marbles that inspired her father to invent the ‘bouncing bombs’ used in the 1943 RAF raid, she was told by excited auctioneers that they could fetch £250,000.

But Mrs Gaunt was horrified to see two other lots advertised for sale, both purporting to be the real marbles. To make matters worse, rumours of fake Wallis marbles in circulation meant Mrs Gaunt’s glass toys did not receive a single bid at auction.

Mrs Gaunt told auctioneers Harper Field that she was the one and only owner of the historic marbles – and two lots they were planning to sell were not genuine. The Gloucestershire auctioneers withdrew the two lots after Mrs Gaunt told them: ‘They are not his marbles, as I am the sole owner of the only marbles used to develop the bouncing bomb concept.’

Mrs Gaunt revealed for the first time that it was she, not her brilliant father, who came up with the concept in the Wallises’ garden in 1942.

She used a catapult to fire her marbles across a water-filled tin tub. ‘I had been playing with them in the garden anyway – and it was me that was using the catapult,’ she recalled.

Her father, she said, ran with the idea and tests proved that backspin enabled a spherical projectile to skip across water – leading to the development of weapons designed to bounce over torpedo nets and hit German dams. The 83rd anniversary of the Dambusters raid is next Saturday.

Richard Morris, the author of a biography of Sir Barnes, investigated sales of supposed Dambusters marbles and found lots totalling more than £70,000 over the past decade. ‘They have been dribbling out in two, threes and fours,’ he added.

Elisabeth Gaunt, 93, is the daughter of Dambusters inventor Sir Barnes Wallis

Mrs Gaunt told auctioneers Harper Field that she was the one and only owner of the historic marbles – and two lots they were planning to sell were not genuine 

Mrs Gaunt revealed for the first time that it was she, not her brilliant father, who came up with the concept in the Wallises’ garden in 1942

Mrs Gaunt said: ‘I feel absolutely disgusted. I hope this action we have taken stops others trying to sell fake marbles.

‘The ones that were going to be auctioned next week look nothing like mine.’ She said auctioneer Leo Denham told her that her 57 marbles – kept in a Fuller’s Peppermint Lumps box since she was eight – could sell for up to £250,000. But at a sale at Denhams, near Horsham in Surrey, not one bid was made, even at just £15,000. That is despite just two marbles fetching £15,200 last September in an auction in Bristol.

That sale went through despite Mrs Gaunt’s daughter Hils McKay ringing the auctioneers on the day to say the marbles were not genuine.

Mrs McKay said: ‘I think the stories of fakes have made collectors nervous.

‘My mother never let them out of her sight and has had them for well over 80 years, since she was seven or eight.

‘In 1942, my grandfather came home and she was using them with a catapult, pinging them across a tub of water and he said, “let’s have a go”.’

Stuart Maule, of Harper Field, said: ‘They [the marbles] were consigned to us with unknown provenance to the vendor and, after consulting with the family, we decided not to proceed with the sale.’