In Neibaurs book "The Charlie Chan Films" (2018) there is a sentence or two about Sidney Tolers "jade ring" at the end of the "Charlie Chans Murder Cruise" chapter (sorry, missed the film viewing to ask this ;-).
The ring turned out to be just "agate" (Not sure what this is. Does it mean something like "glass marble"?).
When I read this I thought I heard that story before. But no, its just a coincidence.
In some (imo not related) european newspapers of april 1937 it is mentioned that Warner Oland wears a jade ring that is very important to him.
He always turned it around the finger during an interview. The text is from Fox PR, I presume.
Two jade rings. Each actor playing a chinese detective ...
Must be coincidence. Yes. But as a Chan fan you know, that coincidence sometimes ... ;-) What do you think?
Some interesting thoughts! First, even "back in the day," not everything found in a media account was always, shall we say, without possible "embellishment"? However, taken at face value, it sounds reasonable that the Toler ring episode did possibly happen. To find that a ring he had been told was jade was actually agate is interesting. Agate is a type of gemstone. The agate marbles you note were so-called, I imagine, because their coloration shared a resemblance.
Now, Toler, or the media, possibly sought an interesting connection between the two onscreen detectives. Warner Oland did consistently wear what appears to be a jade ring. This can be seen in many of the images we have available in our Gallery here at this site (take a look at a number of images from "Charlie Chan at the Race Track"). It appears, from grainy closeups I have looked at, that Oland's ring carries a carved Buddha image.
