Root Beer Floats, Novas, and
Pink
Peltier Marble Company
By
I believe its time that some clarity was brought to bare on the actual origin of
the above named marbles. Confusion reigns and it will only get worse in time.
In 1989, the legendary West Coast Toy & Marble Dealer, Russell Coppel,
commissioned eight different marbles through Peltier Marble Company of
PHOTO #1
Russell would be doing a cross-country trip visiting family in
Russell would also bring bulk marbles to Amana. It made no difference the
pedigree; hed go bulk! My first visit to Amana in 1990 was with Russell and he
had something like 125 sulphides. Late one evening we were out in the 2nd floor
hallway bowling sulphides! Had to quit though because it became obvious wed
eventually break someone’s ankle with all the coming and going in and out of the
rooms. You think you have marble stories!
Well, when it was obvious that the eight different marbles weren’t ever going to
see being boxed-up into a cozy little group, I told Russell he should at least
approach A&W with a promotional schtick for the Root Beer Floats (photo 2).
Never happened! At least he named them proper and the Novas too, being exploding
stars against the blackness of space (photo 3). I think I christened the Pink
PHOTO #2
PHOTO #3
PHOTO #4
The main confusion lies with the Novas because there were three black-based
marbles with surface red & yellow but only one with an additional surface
bruising of white. They are variously lumped together as all being Novas,
whereas only one of them was. Marilyn Barrett highlighted the Novas in her 2002
marble calendar with an inset photo. In Photos 1 and 5a & b, the Nova is the one
in the first position, a narrow ribboned and patched in the second, and the one
with the odd swiggle in the third position. If you had a mixed bag of these
three black-based varieties, you could easily pick out the three types.
PHOTO #5a (top row, front) #5b (bottom row, reverse side):
Little known outside of these named marbles and unfortunately so, are the two
white-based marbles, one having two intense translucent blue ribbons with depth
(photo 6), the other having orange patches beautifully edged in many cases with
yellow (photo 7).
PHOTO #6
PHOTO #7
Finally, there’s the lowly black-based with white smears and ribbons. Nearly
every one of these experienced internal fracturing or more likely multiple
surface annealing cracks. Tough! Sometimes they just don’t get it right!
PHOTO #8
I credit Russell with encouraging me to consider marbles well before I leapt
into the marble ring. For a while he drifted away from marbles but just this
year he had evidenced a renewed interest, even asking me for a copy of Larry &
Marlow’s cats-eye book and he has started collecting them. We have a mutual
corrupting influence on each other as not too long ago Russell and Jeffry Grey
(the maker of Fiber Agates fiberglass, not fiber optic marbles) got me into
collecting SUPER BALLS. Now if that isn’t pathetic, I don’t know what is!
I hope this has brought the light of day to this small group of marbles and a
better understanding of some fine Peltier marbles from the not too distant past.