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Ultimate Japanese transitional score from the Seattle marble show!!!

Some cool Ravenswood Novelty marbles dug by David Tamulevich in the late 1990’s

This marble is ⅝" is this a Vitro? Or a blended MK? Or neither? Lol

I was the lucky one who won this recent auction. I almost needed a medic unpacking this box.

A few more

I am still not comfortable IDing patches. I have an idea of what these are, but then in the second photo the two at the top and top right has me second guessing. This group has both 19/32" and 5/8". What do y'all think?

My interest in Duck Marbles started from the brochures illustrated in “Marbles/Biidama” (2003) by Yukoh Morito, a well-known marble collector in my country who passed away in 2016. In 1992 he founded Japan Marble Association, making a partnership with this forum and Marble Collectors Society of America in the following year. His book “Marbles” features a Japanese marble history section for two pages. On page 29 is where we find the brochures of Nippon Special Glass Ball Mfg. Co. Ltd.. The company’s brand was Duck Marbles. According to the brochures, the company started its business in Hanaten, Osaka city in 1924. The founder, Naoyuki SEIKE, says he and his team of college graduated engineers invented a semi-automatic manufacturing process for marble making at that time. He also refers to American invention of marble machines in 1900 ca.. The brochure in Japanese was printed in 1951, whereas the English version was published in 1952. He had obtained more than 20 patents and utility model rights from Japan Patent Office. The monthly marble production reached 50,000,000 in 1952. (but the monthly production in 1951 was 400,000.) The original brochures were contributed by Seishin Seike, the second son of Naoyuki Seike, to the book. The surname Seike is nothing like Suzuki (mine). Also the first name Seishin is very uncommon. I saw a light of hope in this fact and started a search for the contact information of the same name person. I reached his wife Reiko (85), in Hirakata city, Osaka on 7 Dec. 2021. Below is what I learned from the lady on the phone. Naoyuki Seike, her father-in-law, ran a marble factory in Hanaten and that he made marbles was true. But it was a long time before her marriage that Naoyuki's business had ended and went bankruptcy. Reiko married to Seishin in 1960, a union arranged by her senior brother who worked as a surgeon in Maizuru, Kyoto. Seishin was the second son of Naoyuki. When they met, Seishin was not young (30). He had already been working for Zojirushi Magic Pot company in Hanaten as an engineer, where he led his team to a success of the first electric rice cooker. After 3 years of their marriage, in 1963, Naoyuki passed away at the age over 90. Before his death each of his children was given a bucketful of glass marbles he had kept. His 3 boys were all engineers including one who died very early in his late teens or 20’s. He was the first son who died in an accident where he fell from the marble factory’s roof during a repair. Sadly, Seishin passed away more than 10 years ago. Reiko kept the bucket since then. She assured that the marbles she had now in her apartment were originally inherited from her father-in-law. She washed the marbles and sent half the bucket to me. I opened a box full of marbles at night on 10 Dec.

@VaMarbles Great action in a few of those! @disco005 Crazy bright colors! Here's a 3/4" twofer this Slag & Swirl Saturday . . .

My best CAC - it walked into a Columbus show, and I wouldn’t let its owner leave until we had a deal😉

Attend ONE marble show and they won't be mysteries any longer. You can learn in 2 days in person what will take you 1.5-2 years struggling to learn from flat, one-dimensional photos of varying lighting, focus and color balance on the Web.

More RN

Got lots of lines in this one 1 1/8 in

I purchased a huge bowl of marbles from an online auction and picked them up this morning. Wow! The Bowl was huge ( high 100's) and filled with marbles like these. What do you think?

This is an article from " Glass World " magazine, 1932 Nov. issue. It describes "Naoyuki Seike's glass marbles" (硝子マーブル　清家直行) were viewed by the emperor at Osaka Prefectural Trade Hall on 15 Nov. 1932.　"天覧硝子製品"　means glass products which were viewed by the emperor.

Unique corkscrew. No glow opaque

Happy Thursday!

I recently acquired a box of Japanese Cat's Eyes imported by B. Shackman & Co, which began in the Flatiron Novelty District of New York City (1898-1985). They specialized in marketing novelty and gift items and were long enough lived to have experienced the boom and the bust of the American machine made marble industry, which makes them interesting to me. Daniel Shackman Jacoby (1914-2008), the grandson of founder Bertha Shackman, ran the Company for many years (ca. 1935-1985), and appears to have been actively importing machine made marbles from Europe and Asia during the time when imports of foreign marbles exploded in the late 1950s. I thought it might be fun to learn more about the company's marble offerings. Unlike major jobbers of imported marbles like Penny King, this company appears to have been interested as much in packaging and presentation as product, and it appears to have chased prices across Asia to find an exporter that could meet the needs of their seemingly limited number of marble box imports. I decided to share my efforts to learn more here since I am not getting any younger and it'll probably not be too long before I need crib-notes. One of Shackman's imports appears to have originated in the Netherlands but was apparently packaged in Germany and imported from there. This poly-net bag was posted by @BuckEye in 2017. The marbles are Veiligglas and dating of the bag closure, thanks to @Shamrock Marbles, suggests that the marbles could have been packaged as early as the 1960s. However, warehoused Veiligglas marbles were packaged in poly-net bags long after the company closed in 1961. Many of the bags were simply knotted, with no closure device or labeling. Perhaps @Mojo knows more about these later poly-nets. Here is an example of a Shackman #4721 box I recently found (2-1/2" x 3-3/4" x 1-1/4"). The box is labelled Super Deluxe Jumbo Multi Color Marbles (Marked Japan, #4721). This is one of a few different versions of Shackman's #4721 box. I think this may be an earlier example (1960s). The marbles are a just shy of 1-3/16" (30 mm). Note that the top and sides of the lid are entirely covered by paper, which includes the graphic labeling. I am thinking that @shiroaiko might know more about this box and its contents. In another Japanese version of Shackman's #4721 Super Deluxe Jumbo Multi Color Marbles box (Marked Japan, #4721) the paper label covers only the top of the lid. I think this version is later than the one above. It is also the only version of the Japanese import I have seen with 1-1/8" three-color marbles in it. Photo from WorthPoint. Next is one of Shackman's Taiwanese imports labelled SIX JUMBO Kate Greenaway Marbles (Marked Taiwan; No. 4721). The marbles are 1-1/8" and the box includes instructions for playing "Ring-taw". A recent auction description remarked, "The marbles are made in Hong Kong. Circa 1970-1975" (Block's Marble Auction #1160, Lot 361, 8/24/24). Perhaps @BobBlock will be kind enough to clarify the discrepancy between the auction description and the box label. Screen Capture from Block's Marble Auctions. Another example of the Kate Greenaway box from Pinterest. What I believe is one of Shackman's last imported marble box offerings is from Hong Kong and is labeled Six Fancy Jumbo Kitty Cucumber Marbles. It was produced in 1984 (Marked Hong Kong, #40513, 1984). An example was posted by @Steph in 2007. Note that this is not a variant of the #4721 box like those above. It is smaller (3-1/8" x 2-1/8" x 1") and holds 1" marbles. But like the Kate Greenaway box from the 1970s, it too contains instructions for playing "Ring taw". I think Shackman also marketed a small Kitty Cucumber tin pail filled with cat's-eye marbles and instructions for game play. And throughout the 1960s-1970s they offered a variety of other imported marble-related novelties including: a Handmade Hardwood Oxbow Puzzle (Marked Japan; No. 3664), a Labyrinth Marble Maze Game (Marked Japan), and a Handcrafted Hardwood Tic-Tac-Toe Game (Marked Japan or Taiwan Rep. of China; No. 3380), to name a few. I would like to learn more about B. Shackman & Co.'s boxed marble products, especially a timeline for their offerings, so please add any information you have! And here's to hoping someone is sitting on a stack of Shackman's catalogues!

A Superhero dropped of a box here The MarbleAvenger 🦹‍♀️ Awsome trade 😃 So nice to get Marble Mail 🫠 Enjoy the pictures 🤹‍♂️

If the ball is limestone, then I would lean toward water filtration or some form of filtration. Limestone is soft and porous. A sphere has the largest surface area per unit volume. When layered in a bed or stacked in a tube/tower, you get excellent filtration without impacting media flow. If the ball is a harder stone, then milling isn’t out of the question. Fun find! It seems lonely, you need more. 😉

I recently acquired this great marble bag, as supple as the day it was made. It belonged to a boy named Harry W. Lynch, Jr. (1918-2004) of Blackshire Road in Wilmington, Delaware. How do I know this? Because beyond etching his initials on the front of the bag, Harry embossed his whole name and address on the back. From the looks of it, I am guessing that he was a fastidious child. He also seems to have been a traveler or a dreamer, or both, since he was sure to include "USA" in his full "return-to" address on the back of the bag. As it turns out, Harry was from a notable Wilmington family and had a spirit of volunteerism. He also enjoyed collecting enough himself to leave a significant newspaper masthead collection behind at St. Bonaventure University. This is good stuff in my book. The American Indian graphic on this bag is not known to me, at least at the moment. So please let me know if you have any information about this particular style of bag. It almost looks as if Harry himself could have drawn it. Thanks!

Great buy from a great collector (RIP).

@davesnothere Thank you for taking so many photos! I looked at them closely, and most of them gave me a Seike impression. I don’t mean I’ve seen all of them before, but I understand why you identify them as Seikes. The ribbon marbles in these 4 pictures are siblings. We see bleeding ribbons in opaque white, while a couple of greens on the right got alabaster stripes. I also see white bits in the ribbons, and dark green bits in transparent green. They are Seike traits. The bicolor matrix for sky blue marbles can be on purpose, because I see bicolor examples for ribbon marbles from time to time. The marbles below are submerged ribbon marbles which sometimes look like pseudo-cat's eyes. Although I haven't seen these before, traits like two patches and the mixing of colors tell me they are highly likely to be Seike's. Wispy marbles are fun when they are viewed from various angles. How I wish if I could rotate them on my palm. 🫧✨ Do you think veneer type marbles are post war production? The marbles below are a local find. In my country there is one big collector of old Japanese glassware who is also interested in marbles. Many old marbles go straight to him because antique dealers help to build his collection. In recent years he started to supply (small?) numbers of glass toys to the antique market. These marbles are from his previous collection, bought from a shop in Tokyo. The green patch on the left is nice! I like it a lot! I am happy to see mushrooms! 😃 I wonder if I can identify the two color patch (the far right) as Seike, if it is mixed with patch marbles from other makers. I still cannot figure out the dark color... is it purple or black?...I thought I had purple and black examples somewhere and I found purple and brown. I think brown is rare. The multicolor ribbons got interesting color combinations! Do they belong to the same lot? Interesting that the rare color mushroom has a hint of another color on the yellow. I thought the color combination of yours matches the one of my Insta friend, but yours got darker green. Is there a faint line/tint on the yellow for both? You have a three color patch... mines are somewhat bolder. Possibly postwar production. The orange is especially intense in the middle marble. Is it a transparent color? The 3 color patch is very nice! 🥰 Orange transitionals must be pretty rare… I only have one, and even that one is ambiguous. I always wonder whether it’s a transitional or a swirl. At the moment, I’m thinking it’s more of a swirl, since I can't find a pontil. Seike's transitionals got a crease pontil. @Joe2 kindly offered me to purchase the puzzle box last year. Later I found another set which houses Japanese bisque dolls at Etsy (already sold out). The dolls were originally owned by an elderly English lady.

A favorite of Ravenswood

First hatch of the season.

Some people agree the earth is flat too.

Just an observation and report for those who care to know. It is quite obvious when holding one Top Notch bag in one hand and a Mega Marble in the other. However, on the internet, pictures do not tell. I have about a dozen of these Top Notch net bags and thought I'd see what size they really are. I picked out a random set of Bee Cool, the Mexican version of Bumblebee. So the Glasfirma Top Notch Net Bags contain smaller marbles every time. 2 1/2" pee wee's 17 17/32" size marbles 5 9/16" and a 7/8" shooter The Mega Marble US Angelfish net bag had these sizes. Yes, sizes do vary. These look to be the same as the current Van Gogh named marbles. 3 19/32" 20 5/8" size marbles 1 21/32" and a 15/16" shooter

Blue devils are around 7/8" and have a cobalt blue base with white and purple. Can be somewhat of a swirl or a patch. The swirl type seems to be more common. There may be some rarer examples in smaller sizes and sometimes the white doesn't show much.

Love RW marbles! Thanks for sharing the pics above. Great video, as well. Just watched it earlier tonight. Jaw dropping marbles. Thanks Stephen and David!

Congratulations, that's a great group!

I think it's a sloppy Akro Auger - maybe "lazy" is a better word . . .

With Oxblood

Seike's cat’s eyes in different colors. . The yellow is like neon yellow. I enjoyed taking pictures of white-purple variants. I was fascinated by the shifts of colors. Some fracture. Bigger vanes always have the risk, when the colors are not compatible enough. I guess no marble makers put them in an oven for annealing.

Marbles with orange vanes. Some ribbed vanes count 12. A group of three. A combination of thick vanes (opaque orange) and wispy structure (transparent orange). Another group of 6 marbles in orange. Some got tinted base glass. One big vane in the center. One submerged ribbon. One marble has a big spidery cutline. Others got smooth ones which are not noticeable.

I bid on 55 marble lots and only won 3 but I am glad. I was lacking these Marble King Rainbows in my collection and they may be quite common but they have a certain nostalgic value for me. These were the kind in my bag, the Vitro's too and the rest that I played with were cats eyes. I can't wait til I get my shipping bill and pay for them. I think I did OK and many of the lots I passed on went quite high. This hobby is very alive and well. Total marbles on the way soon comes to just over 800! woo hoo!

Here is what the online auction photo looked like and the photo I posted was after organizing them. I was worried I bid too high until I picked them up and the bowl was big.

I think these will work for Swirly Saturday . . .

It's the best day of the week! 1. 5/8" Just some great eyelashes, if I could get a better camera and lens, I might be able to show the microscopic bubbles making up these eyelashes. 2. 21/32" Carnelian colors but a corkscrew 3. 5/8" The widest, but thinnest surface Brown corkscrew on Yellow

Size is ⅝" not sure on it

Some sweet Alligator Eyes I was lucky enough to buy last year.

Marbles and stuffed animals Lucky we had a magic frog and a magic well 😉👍🏻

Every time we putted a stuffed animal on the crown of the frogg when he was away....magic 😃 A magic frogg Just say the words abbracadabra 😃 Full bag when he goes home again 🍀

Here are a couple of good Akros from brother Billy's archive . . .

Few new Akro’s this week. Maybe the 2nd Crow for our collection.

Thinking of the time and my culture, the viewing was really something. Seike must have been very honored with it!

Boo Yah !!! Oh Yes, it is, and this ribbon pattern sets it apart from common Sunsets. The ribbons are condescended into one ribbon that contains 2-3 colors. Common Rainbos have ribbons that are each one separate color and aren't as tight as these. The little Horse Hair ribbon really sets this one apart. As a PeltHead. This is a Top Shelf Rainbo with lots of Tiny Bubbles.🔥

Man! That's pretty impressive that the glass products were viewed by the emperor himself! Not that any marbles don't have history, but Japanese transitionals seem to have some particularly impressive history. 🙂

Just acquired this mib in a lot . took it into the sun for some pics Has an a crazy base glass like opal with some blue tint or something the cork I thought was black but it is dark dark purple . I got some shots of the blue tint it is crazy it's like 2 marbles when the light shines through the blue.