tankgrrl29

sorry to hear about ron. i "almost" got to meet him at the ottawa show once. i can't remember exactly how i missed the opportunity, but from what i'd heard of him, i was real dissappointed. he was the guy that gino B would call "THE pelt guru". i'm sure gino was being his modest self, but that should give you an idea. best regards to his family, and the friends who will miss him. ~chris

all the vintage MKs i've seen had opaque ribbons. the fact that mine and steve's both have transparent ribbons makes me think they're variations of the same thing (steve's is more green-blue and mine is more blue-green). but steve, what did you mean about the "st mary's eye" and the oxblood? are you saying mine have those and therefore that makes it not a kato?

is this a Kato? i seem to remember them being described at having turquoise ribbons with oxblood - these are transparent midnight blue ribbons with a line of "oxblood" any clue what these sell for? i don't collect MK so i'd be willing to discuss sale or trade, but i have no idea what the price range would be. i do like it....i've never seen one like this before.

that's a real shame. now i remember who you're talking about. he was looking for some little akro patches to trade a long time ago, and i swapped him some for one of his guineas. here's a post with some of his awesome marbles: http://marbleconnection.invisionzone.com/i...364entry22364 best wishes to those who lost him... ~chris

sounds like it was a real nice service. thanks for posting, guy. ~chris

mel's service is today. please let us know if anyone from the board attended. (okay, and let me know if anyone was pissed at the racy Betty Page postcard i sent to cheer up mel when we first heard the news !) rest in peace, mel......... ~chris

like pinx, mel was at just about all the shows i went to. i don't even remember ever being introduced to him...i just remember him always being there, and treating everyone as if he already knew them. he had the greatest deadpan sense of humor; he'd look you in the eye and say the most ridiculous things with such a straight face that you couldn't help but bust up laughing. he had wonderfully funny stories, and how could you not love his fashion-sense! i'll miss him. ~chris

If marbles are cut from a glass stream into globs, using the toothpaste analogy, wouldn't they all have two seams except for the first and the last glob? possibly.......they also might have started a run and adjusted colors, and then tossed the first bunch that weren't quite up to standard (now we must switch to a pancake analogy, whereby one will sometimes toss the first batch of pancakes that don't quite turn out until the griddle gets 'just right' ) also, regarding the end of a run, they often just added colors to the tanks to switch to a different color scheme, so really there might not be a "last marble". or if there is, good luck finding it! Are the MCS Pelts the first and last "globs" then? (They have only one seam, or none, right?) some are of that thinking. i'm not one. remember, the S in MCS stands for "swirl". peltier had a "swirl" feeder that deliberately made squiggly-patterned marbles. if you don't see a "seam", it could very well just be blended into the "pattern", in the same way slags don't show "seams". How can a marble have no seams, unless it is reworked somehow not to have a seam? good question. i'm thinking one reason might be because it shows up in the pattern, and we only imagine we see a 'seam', but really we're seeing a suggestion of a seam. think of peltier bananas. many will show a curved cutline, but, just as often there's no visible seam. Here are four more Pelts. I'm not sure if these show seams or not. Pelts seam to be the hardest to identify seams on, for me, at least. i'm seeing cutlines on all of those. look for where the colors are interrupted abruptly.

in the same way that a handmade marble has pontils from where the marble was cut from the cane, machine made marbles have "seams" or cutlines (or "sheer marks") from where the "globs" were cut from the glass stream. if you imagine toothpaste coming out of a tube, and that you had scissors snipping off bits as it came out, you can imagine the two parts where the "seams" would be. people use seams to identify marbles, but they're not constant so they're not super reliable. they should only be used as a clue. some companies' sheers helped to form the design on the marbles. the marbles you show with the seams close together are one possible example, although i don't know that for sure. another possible example is on the multicolor rainbos with the spiral design - my belief is that the spiral is from a cut with a twist. to answer your questions, i see two cut lines on each of your marbles, with i think two that are close together, and none that go "all the way around". ~chris

even the best among us have trouble agreeing on slags sometimes. someone will surely list some features to watch out for, but i can almost promise you that it will be meaningless information until you start getting a good 'feel' for things - as well as build your vocabulary. in other words, be sure you can ID what a slag is first. then study them and find your own way to make sense of the differences and similarities. my feeling is that if you can use your senses rather than words someone told you, you'll do better in the long run when it comes to slags.

melanie, you've got a great mix of relatively older marbles. they're not super valuable in the condition they're in, but some are keepers for sure. you might want to consider just keeping all of those, and using them to learn the basics on some of the vintage makers. really - most of us started out learning by buying a bunch of odd lots on ebay that turned out to be mostly new. you're already way ahead of the game with that starter batch! people will tell you the best way to learn is to go to a show, but i think sorting and studying lots like this is just as good - if not a better way to really absorb the subtleties. roger - good eye on that purple and yellow!!

if i hadn't just shown one of my own the other day, i might've gone for it, but i had to show restraint

i laughed! i cried! i felt like i was there!! thanks for the pictures!

hey scoopy can you flag these citrus threads for the archives? thanks! ~chris

dang, it took you long enough! where you been? dork...i was talking about the "cat's eyes" (as you call them) - roger showed them in his first picture and included them in the sparkler category, which made sense to me. send em back if you still think they're ugly - i'm running low, and i think they're cool as lemonade!

hey cool! that's where our beach balls and at least some of our sparklers came from! at the top of the two similar museum pictures, it looks like some "german striped transparents" are in that same cabinet (top of picture) - did you find anything out about them? thanks for showing the pictures, and i'm glad you had fun! ~chris

awwww, shucks

hey, thanks, maggie! i'll send you a beachball one to add to your collection ~chris

i'm grateful to be able to help while the patch shape on peltiers is most usually "squiggly", it's not rare to find ones that have 'clean' edges - check out the variation in the box pictured above... ~chris

i know what you mean, liz; once i got a batch i thought were really cool, and i picked out some of the best ones to send to orbboy one christmas. his reaction: "aren't they ugly?!" and maggie....wow! you got some kind of dumb marble luck! ~chris

very good question, ILM! one of the best and most well-known sources of peltier history/marble information is Ottawa resident, Gino Biffany. he's pictured in Castle & Peterson's book on machine made marbles with a large board he made. on the board are numerous examples of many different styles of peltier marbles, including some labeled acme realers. gino had originally - and mistakenly - believed that Acme Realers were opalescent baseballs. he later found out that they are actually opalescent peerless patches. he has since tried to correct the information at every opportunity. i believe block has been notified of the misinformation (i think i even posted this on block's board once), but apparently he (block) only sees fit to update the price info in his books. funny, too, because block's Marble Mania pictures a box of acme realers, and you can faintly see it printed on the box cover (upside down) on p.118 here are some pictures Gino printed and shared (notice not ALL the patches are S-shaped)

this is a totally rough guesstimate, but i think regular peerless patches outnumber acme realers around 10-1. they're kinda like whiteys in the respect that they're not particularly eye-appealing, but to some people (like me) they're fun to find. and....every once in a while you find an oddball, which makes them extra fun. ~chris

comparing to a known example would be my personal recommendation. some are a little more obvious than others. i've found some while out hunting that i thought sure were peltiers, then when i got them home to compare, found that they weren't after all. but if you can backlight the marble and see the above features, there's a good chance you got one. congrats to the winning guesses - you may all "high-5" one another ~chris

sorry, sandy - i edited my post. you're not a dummy, i am! what a surprise that everyone can't read my mind!

looks like roughly 2.5 correct guesses out of 13 or so, which is why i cringe whenever someone posts an unqualified ID of 'acme realer' in response to a picture of a mossy looking patch. here are the same three marbles, same positions - backlit. notice how dense the baseglass is on the two left marbles, while the one on the right turns practically clear, revealing some motion inside with a touch of opalescense (and even a hint of feathering!): edit: man, i'm a dolt - sorry - the Acme Realer is the ONE on the right thanks for playing ~chris