Ric

What size is it?

Production, meaning regular production - it's a JABO Classic made sometime between 1991-2007/8 in a run financed by JABO. The Contract (or Investor) Runs went from 2007/8-2012 and were financed by different groups of investors who made marbles at the JABO factory - these are the named runs, Joker, Foxfire, Mamie, etc.

The first is a creased "pontil" transitional - perhaps Japanese. I think the others are Vitro Conqueror variants - not slags.

Patches, 9/16" to 15/16" . . .

That's what I was thinking too.

Yes, JABO.

@Joe2 Nice TriLites. @Kimbernugs Yellow Jackets are less common than many other types of Vitros. Yellow Jackets . . .

I'd guess Alley upper left, and maybe JABO on the right ones, and Champion lower left, but the big circular reflections in the first three pics are really distracting and make ID difficult so . . .? Your backlighting is not what I am used to seeing, it looks like just more light to me.

I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around the upper left one - it looks like it has three seams?

Lower right is giving me JABO vibes but not sure.

What I see is Akro lower left and MK for the rest but that might change if I saw a view of the patches.

The lower left is giving me a Master vibe.

It looks like a JABO to me.

The colors are a bit different than the one Jeff showed but the pattern is similar - I was never quite sure where to put it. Below is @Jeff54's for comparison . . .

Here is an Alley Snake that @Dave 13 posted a while back . . .

These look to me like nice examples of marbles that were packaged by VEB Werk für Technisches Glas Ilmenau. As far as I can tell, they were in operation from 1969-1990.

Here is an interesting excerpt from an article titled Relics of the Fire, that was published in The Little Corporal: An Original Magazine for Boys and Girls and for Older People Who Have Young Hearts, Emily Huntington Miller, Editor, Chicago, March, 1872, pp. 109-10. "The toy shops—alas! how can I tell the tragedies there! Dolls with glass eyes melt- ed out; wax dolls with complexion melted off; long haired beauties, with not a hair to their heads; all black and horrid. Square blocks of beautiful glass marbles welded together, and bent as though made of wax; chunks of china dolls, of all sizes, joined for life in grotesque ways. But, saddest of all, china babies in bath tubs, who it seems are packed in pairs (one turned upside down on another, as you put a cover on a dish), . fastened together in such a way, that one of the unfortunate babies must always sit on its head!"

There are certainly dark filaments when I look at it with a loupe and there may be some oxblood in there too. Together with the other colors and thick/thin areas, it sure makes for an attractive patch. But then, I am a big fan of nice brown coloring on a marble too. P.S. I found my "green eye" but y'all are going to have to wait until this coming "Akro Friday" to see it. lol

@Shamrock Marbles That Ebay listing is pretty sketchy IMO. The photo that you showed is the first in the group of three. The second photo supposedly shows the reverse . . . It indicates that the medal was made by Dieges & Clust just like Hansel's, but seems to indicate that this one is made of Sterling. It gets really weird when you look at the third photo in the listing, which appears to show another sterling medal. But it does not look like the same medal shown in the first photo . . . As you can see, the last medal shown does not appear to be missing the raised line under the "Camps" like the first medal in the first photo seems to be. Otherwise, the first photo might just be a really bad image. It's hard to tell for sure. Is there any wonder folks worry about reproductions? I wouldn't touch this listing with a 10 foot pole!

It's interesting to me that the bead upper right resembles a German made "Cloud" marble in that the "crumbs" are encased in clear glass unlike those on the surface of the other beads shown. And it seems that one would have required a higher level of skill to produce.

To me, it looks like the second medal was produced for generic "Vacation Camps", which I am sure where numerous when these medals were cast. Is there any engraving on that one indicating which vacation camp award the medal or what it was awarded for? Does it show wording on the back that includes "Gold Filled" like the first one? The first medal, appears to have been purposefully produced so that it could be customized to identify the organization awarding the prize. It seems highly unlikely to me that it was "machined/ground off then engraved", since if that were to have been done with the second medal, there would not be a raised platform left upon which to engrave something. It appears that the second medal is already missing the raised ridge that should extend under the word "Camps", and where that material is missing it is flush with the background. It seems to me that, there is some possibility that either or both of these medals were "recast" from originals. It would be straight forward to recast the second and/or add a raised platform in place of lettering to produce the first.

These are interesting medals worthy of discussion and, hopefully, additional examples. So I decided to start a new thread just to keep things better organized and to avoid adding too much extraneous discussion to our "Your Sunday Best" thread.

Nice Melissa, the hint of blue is a good thing!

Jelle, who has posted here in the past, has some really fun races . . . https://www.youtube.com/@JellesMarbleRuns