Ric

@akroorka Do you think there is any chance someone polished a Vacor Serpent hoping to make it look more like a Superman - even a polished Superman? I am not used to seeing those dark-colored striations in the yellow (pic 2) on a Superman and I am thinking the polish may have burned that pinker red you see on some Serpents to this color, which certainly would make the marble look more like a burnt Superman than an obvious Serpent. I also don't recall seeing a Superman where any view of the marble would not show some yellow (pic 1). People could get pretty devious trying to turn a 25 cent marble into one they can sell for $50. Just some thoughts.

@akroorka I just bought myself a small digital caliper that actually reads out in fractions of an inch - I'm totally stoked!

Thanks, Dave - great addition! I don't have any in MK bags - at least that I can find at the moment. lol

Gotta remember those drafting templates include an allowance for the width of a pencil point - the holes are actually a bit bigger than they are marked.

Since the genes that produce black pigmentation became regulated in a pattern-specific manner.

Akro did not make any cat's eye type marbles, Master Glass did, but Master Marble, which came first, did not. I am not sure which of the Master companies made these crazy potato chip looking ones that may or may not be considered cat's eyes but I wish I had a handful of them.

Yours also has a bit of oven brick, which is way more common in Master than Akro and, to me, the bubbles don't look right for Akro either. But Art is right, Akro probably made a lot more 1" marbles than Master did so . . .?

There is one example in this group of dug MKs that Steph posted in the Study Hall in 2017. And there are a few in this bag of Gladding era Vitros I have . . . You decide. 🙂

Hmmm, kind of a tough call, but I am leaning slightly Master over Akro.

They pretty much do look like All Reds but I think MK made some that are very similar too, and the seams on these look kind of long for Vitro . . .

I can pretty much guarantee that he would of liked that one too.

I've always liked the red glass on those marbles.

That is the challenge with lots of Vacor's swirls. Many of them have four ribbons and sometimes a fold can look like a seam . . .

Another Red Bee?

That would be my take on it too.

I'd say it's a Red Bee unless there is AV in the red, then it would be a Ruby Bee, I think.

This is certainly the sort of business that is going to require a significant amount of time and effort to build a reputation for honesty and reliability, since you really can't see the entire surface of the marble using the encasement system they appear to be offering. But who knows, maybe they can make it fly. It's surprising that they haven't already posted here to announce the availability of their services.

BitDefender didn't have a problem with the link but I removed it from my earlier post anyway. As for free advertising - sunlight is usually a good disinfectant . . .

I have never heard of a marble grading service or seen a professionally graded and encased marble. I just did a Google search and found the Marble Grading Company. I had never seen it before. It's pretty interesting but I know nothing about the service or who is involved with it. It will be interesting to see what we can learn though. Thanks for pointing it out.

I agree - JABO.

The small orange and yellow one looks like a Vacor Sunset to me. Can you tell me the diameter of the swirl?

I think they are all Vitro. The last two, in particular, look like they might be newer ones from the Anacortes location. The other looks a bit more like a weak All Red.

You make a good point Ron, I really should do a better job of explaining why I think a marble is what I think it is. When I look at this one, I see what appears to be an attempt to form four ribbons - you can see/imagine that possibility looking at the first pic. It looks like there should have been two distinct ribbons on each side of the seam - they would have been located at the top and bottom of what now appear to be wide equatorial patches. It seams to me they just bled out so bad that it filled the area between them. This sort of bleeding between ribbons is fairly common on Rainbos.

So it sounds like it still might be from over the pond . . .

It doesn't look like a Peltier Superman to me. I'd be more worried about it being a Vacor than a polished marble.