Updated September 1, 2025 at 11:35 AM EDT
Editor’s note: This segment was rebroadcast on Sept. 1, 2025. Click here for that audio.
Dave Lee Valle is a ‘glasser,’ or sea glass collector.
He combs beaches for real sea glass, which is decades old and has been buried by sand, uncovered by tides, and tumbled over rocks and clam shells to get that perfect look: rounded edges and a cloudy base.
Valle is a sea glass artist. His foot-high Christmas trees have boughs of layered pale green pieces. His nightlights with perfect little white and blue sailboats are enchanting.
Right outside Valle’s apartment is Revere Beach, just north of Boston. On summer days, the long crescent beach is packed. But as fall comes, he has it all to himself.
“Revere Beach is the oldest public beach in the nation. Back in the [1920s] and 30s when they didn’t have great shoring methods, you would have even old cars when a big storm or hurricane would be coming in, and they’d try to shore up the banks between the homes,” Valle says. “So, a lot of this junk, and we call it treasures, is really trash if you look at it. Things that are buried and they over time comes out and it starts tumbling.”
Beachcombers like Valle are looking for areas previously occupied by old dumps or casinos that would have that old glass.
Under a microscope, real sea glass will show chips that result from years of tumbling.
It’s an important distinction.
Sea glass collecting has grown in popularity in the last 10 years, with hundreds of thousands of people joining public sea glass groups, Valle says.
Valle runs a private group of 500 collectors. He’s sold one piece of real sea glass for $350.
“It was a special piece. I found the bottom of a whiskey bottle with an anchor. It’s like an aqua blue color, and it was just totally frosted,” Valle says. “That was like one of those once-in-a-lifetime finds.”
Valle estimates the piece was from the 1920s or 1930s. Rare finds like that are worth whatever people are willing to pay for them, he says.
“I was on the beach one day and there was a lady on the beach. Her mom had just passed and she always wanted to find a red piece. She was hoping that her mom had under a sign,” Valle says. ”And so I found one and I gave it to her and she was just, you should have seen her face. I mean, that’s what sea glass does to some people.”
Valle found sea glassing after shattering his hip in a waterskiing accident. He says it relieves his attention deficit disorder.
“I come to the beach, look for my glass, focus, and everything else shuts down,” he says. “So I can relax. I can take a breath and think about just one thing.”
When Valle finds a new piece of glass in the water, he throws it in the trash. Some people are putting glass in the water so that it will tumble and they can find it later because they say there’s not enough of the old glass.
“It’s become a problem mainly because of social media,” Valle says, “and there was a video recently posted of a lady in Gloucester from a public beach smashing bottles on the rocks.”
Fake sea glass marbles are another problem, Valle says.
“People have been doing this 20 years and haven’t found a marble. When you get it — a lot of us that either have pain, looking for that joy in that one thing that makes everything feel good — when we find a piece like that, you do cartwheels, because it’s just such a thrill and good feeling,” he says. “And you realize it’s a fake or new marble that people are throwing on the beach. It’s like, what a letdown. We’re finding people throwing 30 marbles out at a time in one area.”
Valle has received pushback over the years for speaking out against these new methods of sea glassing. But the International Sea Glass Association is on his side: The website asks members to pledge to never use imitation sea glass.
“Sea glass by definition is a piece of glass that’s been tumbled and weathered over time, naturally by the ocean and the elements in the environment,” Valle says.
Some new sea glassers buy tumblers and throw glass in with sand to create the coveted look at home.
“Not everyone lives by a beach and they want to do art or as long as it’s advertised as homemade tumbled glass, there’s nothing wrong with that, just like tumbled stones,” Valle says. “But you have to let people know what they’re buying. You can’t advertise it as sea glass because it’s not sea glass.”
On Revere Beach, Valle calls foraging for real sea glass his church.
“I call it my sanctuary. I come here, it helps me find a better me. That’s really what it is. You know, I have my struggles I’ve had in the past,” he says. “My favorite time of year is this year when it cools down and the crowds disappear because then it’s my beach again.”
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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