Ric

Almost all of the West Virginia Swirl companies made game marbles. The patterns often resemble the patterns on the other non-game marbles they made, and they are not usually worth the effort to sort. Don't seize up - go through them and look for anything special, then throw them in the garden. They'll make weeding a bit more interesting. 🙂

Yes, but you should understand these are very rare marbles. You might look through several thousand opaques and never find one. And be aware that there are single and double seamed examples and some are hand-gathered. There is a good link here to a page from Pete's old Land of Marbles that Steph found on the WayBack Machine for a little more info.

Some single colored marbles are, hand-gathered CAC Pastels or World's Best Moons, German Opaques, some Master Cloudys or Akro Flinties, maybe. As for other types, I like the Vitro Tomatoes or others with exceptional patterns. A lot of it just depends on what you like. Typical game marbles have little if any collectible value though, so I wouldn't expect to get any money out of them, which means you could just keep them in a jar, play with them, donate them or do crafts with them, because it's not going to "cost" you anything to keep them either. 🙂

Maybe Ravenswood.

The second Alley location 1931-32.

I think I would call it an Onyx - white and a colored transparent base.

This is a tough one, Alley or Ravenswood? Given the size and transparent green, I'm just over on the Ravenswood side of the fence.

Some of these may have been shown here before but they sure look nice together . . .

I think we have a winner - thanks, Bill!

From the looks of this box, I wonder if they did originally have 30 marbles - it seems like they would fit but . . .? I'm kinda hoping someone else who knows will chime in.

Aquamarine variants, the biggest are just shy of 1" . . .

That is a nice one, Dave!

I call this St. Mary's Alley a Ghost Superman, but I may be the only person who does.

I say if you find them over an inch - keep 'em. Nice ones, Dave!

Nice Dave, I'd say they're examples worth having!

I came across this pic (on pinterest) while surfing, these are not the minor differences I thought they were. But I still don't know if the right one is really a fake or a later reprint. Master Marble started about 1930 then reorganized and became Master Glass in 1941. MG did not close until 1974 so it seems at least possible that the box on the right was produced by Master Glass late in their history. These are apparently the boxes that were "found" flat, claimed to be NOS, and back-filled. Maybe @Al Oregon or someone else knows more about this.

Mine is is not "packed" either and I think that, at some point in time, bunches of NOS No. 5 boxes were found flat and back-filled. There are apparently two versions of the box that show minor differences from one another too, which has lead to some speculation about possible reproduction, although they might have just been reprinted too - maybe one at Master Marble and another at Master Glass?

Not a Tiger Eye but it does look Master to me - not seeing Vitro.

Well, rats! I just dumped them out and I have 25 - a senior moment, I guess.

If there is transparent blue on the third one I think it may be an older All Red, even before the Black Line All Reds, aka, a TriLite.

It's giving me a bit of a Euro vibe.

Ha, I just looked at mine and I have 24 too. I was thinking 5 x 6 put I guess it's 4 x 6.

A couple of extra colors too . . .

I think the two color P&Rs are less common than the single color or tricolor ones, aren't they?