tankgrrl29

RAR, either i'm confused, or you've got one of your pelts with your vitros... is that from this group?

bill wasn't a marble maker, so it wouldn't have been him that made those.

Melissa's tombstone will read: "Her cupboards were bare, but her marble collection was FABULOUS!" (just messing with ya, Melissa!!)

have not heard of this, but if it exists, i'd love to see it!

they look like they kinda want to be, but i'm not seeing a distinct enough wood grain pattern. they should look like where you've taken some stain to a piece of wood (hence, the name ). *ps: as far as I know, i'm the one who coined the nickname with it starting out as a casual way i described my own marbles that had the woodgrain feature. meaning, it's a characteristic, not a proper name of a specific marble.

rick, was yours one from the water damaged find? (thinking it wasn't but maybe)

got mine at least 20 years ago. are yours filled with the same shreddy type of catseyes? i see that RAR tagged @Al Oregon - al, do you remember these boxes coming up for sale?

Carowill, it looks like you may have gotten your boxes from the same source that i got mine from. about a million years ago, someone on another board came across a case of original stock, but unfortunately, they were water damaged. the marbles inside were MM cats, and those were dinged up pretty good. still, it was an opportunity to get some known MM mibs, so i bought a box. ring any bells? mine happens to have 31 marbles, so go figure, RAR

not feeling pelt on this one it does look like a good match color-wise to the chinese example. if it's not that, then a contemporary torch-made might be a good guess. the ones i (and others) made were smaller sized ones like this. it's a nice marble, in any case!

all peltier... top/right looks NLR to me. the others, possibly the dreaded T-word (tweeners )

i don't know that i have any Heatons to compare to, but i've found that the MK cats often look like a torn off piece of paper where the vanes come together. hard to explain, but there's a straight edge that gives them away for me.

aaaahhh i gotcha now. just going by appearances on a computer screen, they all look related to my eye. (sorry, not related to my eye... to my eye, they look related. to each other. ) 2, 3, and 4 all have those thin, jasper-like 'lines'. 1, 3, and 4 have similar "dipped" areas (dipped, meaning like how you'd color easter eggs and overlap some colors) the thing i'd be looking for would be signs that someone took an old marble and altered or embellished it to make it look like something else. i think i've seen marbles that were double glazed and they look like crap (crackled, creased, and clumpy...). these aren't 'marker marbles' so the only other thing i can think of would be adding paint, or maybe nail polish. but i think you'd be able to tell if someone did that. adding this last caveat to say that i haven't had a lot of exposure to vintage ceramic marbles, nor have i seen any like those you show before. but i *have* run across quite a few of the mill ball fakes of different styles, and yours don't look like those. i feel like they would have jumped out at Hansel as modern if they were modern.

@Ric i could see that ceramic marble you got from Bill coming from the Peltier property, but almost surely not being made by them. (as i'm sure you know) it's an old town with a lot of marble history. they held tournaments for the kids. and i have to believe that at least some of the workers also liked playing marbles, and it would be easy (for me, anyway) to believe that yours could have been lost by someone many years previous to when Bill found it.

i actually don't have a ton of them, but i really should get them all in one place and do some serious sorting. i have one of those butterfly display boxes with a variety of examples that i *think* @wvrons sent me a lifetime ago. i dropped it once..still not sure i got everything back in the right spots 😮

pretty colors! (nice buttcrack )

the Mystery Patches were peltier for a while, i believe. @wvrons i remember photos of your grandson from when he was that young... dang, where did the time go?! we sure have learned a lot since then - in no small part due to your contributions. the WV swirls still make my head spin. mine are all dumped together and i have no idea if i have anything 'good'. maybe some day i'll be one of those old ladies who sells off a jar to someone who can't believe their luck 😂

it's too bad the old boards (and so many old posts on this board) are gone. SO many stories about the various digs...some clandestine, some controversial, some suspected of being 'fake news'. i remember when "dug" was a dirty word, and full disclosure meant a seller was obligated to mention if a marble came out of the ground. and then there were Jill's dirty quarts of MKs - you could buy a bag of unsorted marble kings and have your own treasure hunt! i was blessed to have a turn at the property across the street from the Peltier mansion before it was sold. that was so fun, mostly because migbar & boyce lundstrom were there too, but not gonna lie - the hunt was kind of intoxicating

that's a shame, if so. i'm on FB and my opinion is that it's useless for learning marbles. agree with you on Don's contributions. he pretty much mentored me when i was new. before i had a camera, i'd send him my marbles to confirm my ID guesses or to take photos for me so i could share them. as i gained experience, we'd do trades, or exchange gifts. can't recall if it was decatur or ottawa where we met in person. every new collector should be so lucky!

idk either...i feel like i'm (we're) missing something obvious but i can't place it. bottom/right has that little akro cap i diagramed above; top/left is trying to make some lips. nothing feels like peltier from where i'm sitting. the base color keeps changing from clear to electric yellow to peach LOL... if @Steph hadn't already weighed in, i'd definitely want her opinion i also feel like @wvrons or don miller would know these right away. thanks for all the photos, @Melissa !!

good point.... i don't see many akro, tbh, but i do see a lot of vitro and agree they aren't bubbly. Master Glass and CE Bogard can be bubbly, but the colored glass is generally 'shreddier' looking. These remind me of the patch shape in Melissa's mibs, but again, the shreddiness is not seen in her patches.

couple thoughts... Melissa's photos are starting to look like Vitro 'lips' to me. I feel like they're upside down in all but the first photo. I've attached some akro pics showing how akro patches (often/mostly?) have a swoop across the 'front' from seam to seam, with a bit of a cap that extends over one pole. I diagramed this in one image. the other images are old photos i saved. they're labeled as 'lizzie's dug akro patches'

is Don Miller active on this board? he used to sell groups of these on ebay (and his own website) back when i was a young marble grasshopper. 🦗

dang, good luck!! i inherited a bag of marbles weighing about 15 lbs and it took me forever to wash, grade, and sort them. still not sure how to get rid of them though 😮

that might help 🙄 i can't tell if they're being turned 'upside down' or - ? (seriously, i am spatially impaired! my brain needs to recreate the 'motion' of moving left to right, seam to seam, plus top & bottom, as if holding in my hand in order to make something 3-D from the photos.)

@Melissa thanks for the post and extra photos. unfortunately, they're not helping me a lot because they're all pretty much the same angle. 🤔 i will say that i wouldn't cringe over a peltier ID. they kind of look like what a PPP would look like with an opaque base glass. OR like a 'flat banana' (where the banana looks like it floated up to the surface, like a magic 8 ball). @Steph is there a separate thread on those honey amber bananas? i never did believe those were peltier but if there is provenance, i'd love to hear the back story.