Ric

No, just a Rainbo.

A slag of some sort - likely Akro but need more views to be sure. It looks a little wonky, whatever it is.

William's got it.

Last pic, 3rd from the left looks like it might be hand-gathered slag, like Roberto said. The second from the right looks more like a WV Swirl than a slag and so does the dark (black?) one. I would need more views to say much more.

A Vitro Conqueror missing its patch.

#3 is a Multicolor Rainbo and #4 is a Rainbo. I think you have the others correct!

Maybe I can clarify. All marble companies produced many marbles that would not pass their quality control process for a variety of reasons. They might be fractured, out of round or misshapen. Or sometimes, workers on a shift might have been too beat to package their quota and the marbles got dumped on the factory property. I am sure there were driveways in WV that had as many marbles as stones in them. The discarded marbles were used as fill under cement floors, in french drains, etc. After the factories closed many of these marbles were excavated by diggers and found their way into the hands of collectors. An example might be Akro's Popeye Patches. The vast majority of these types were discarded because they did not form corkscrews like they were supposed to, but they were dug up on the factory grounds and many of them are collectible today. I hope this helps clear up your confusion. It's important to remember that marbles were made as children's toys and were used to actually play marble games with. Companies prided themselves on the quality of their marbles - their roundness, solidness and eye appeal. Hence Akro's marketing lingo "As straight as Akro flies". The last thing any kid would want is to spend their hard-earned allowance on a package of marbles and find out that several of them were egg shaped and useless for playing marbles with. Such a thing would certainly cause a company to loose favor and market share, hence the discards.

These are West Virgina Swirls, made by several West Virginia companys, and Akro did not make many swirl type marbles. Most of these look like they were made by Alley Agate.

There were literally tons of marbles dug from the old Akro factory site, many of which would not have passed their quality control process, and egg-shaped marbles aren't really useful for their intended purpose so many wound up being dumped.

I think it's Alley.

The size of these marbles is nuts! Are the kids using like 1 1/4" targets? lol

The base glass of Rainbos can vary greatly.

The big one is just shy of 1".

Nice ones, Art.

Cool marble, Art. This one has pretty similar colors but the base is true black . . .

Oh my, what a marble!

Peltier. Sometimes the ribbons get spread out pretty evenly around the marble.

That's really great, Art. It's a very good approximation for a HS student! And if you ever get a chance to get to the museum in Amsterdam you need to. I was lucky enough to visit around 2010 and I am pretty sure my heart stopped a few times while walking through. I have been to quite a few art museums in my day but there a bunch of pieces there that literally took my breath away. It's well worth the effort getting over there.

it appears that they might be dug - several look pretty egg-shaped.

Nice work, Chuck! Where are you getting your foam?

Some of the info they cite is wrong too - particularly the date and location of the first American marble company.

Good stuff, Sherry. You know, we have a new subforum for these types of documents now, thanks to Jason and Steph!

Yup, it's a Vacor.

It's a white base. And I am not sure where you got the info you showed but I am pretty certain Ravenswood did not make any 1" marbles.