Ric

My understanding is that Cowan de Groot and Grahams Bros. were general toy merchants who marketed many imported products, including marbles. Does your reference specifically indicate that marbles were being imported from Japan by these companies? Is there any documentation from Seike that indicates his marbles were being sold to these companies?

Thanks for sharing this, it's way cool! An automated shearing mechanism for hand-gathered marbles. I can just imagine Cerise Agates being made, and at the rate of 40/min no less. Very interesting.

A wire-pull would be essentially one continuous stream of striping glass flowing around in the base glass. This looks like multiple shorter streams of striping glass, at least to me.

Happy Thursday! Here's an old pic. I think the dish is Czech.

Those are cool, Melissa - sorta Coral colors.

@disco005 Well, there they are - nice ones too! Looks like an Alley Mountain Dew middle right - that's a good marble.

I don't think it's very common for Heaton to have blue along with the green. For that and other reasons I'm leaning Ravenswood.

@shiroaiko The history is very interesting to me. It's helps put into perspective the beginnings of cat's eye marbles here. As for Seike's marbles, in general, they are intriguing and many are very pretty too. I have collected random swirls, like those produced by various companies in West Virginia (usually referred to as WV Swirls) for a long time. It seems that Seike's swirl marbles span quite a range - from marbles that resemble Alley to others that look more similar to Ravenswood or another WV Swirl maker. Your photos are a beautiful resource. I enjoy looking at marbles, especially those that are new to me. It is fun to compare them with marbles made by American companies.

It is one of my favorites. The base glows nicely too.

I have it with my Raveswoods. They are all Ravenswood.

Just a little WV color.

I certainly didn't intend things to sound this way, Dave. I'm enjoying the discussion too. I never plan to quit trying to identify marbles, especially the ones made by companies I I don't know much about. You feel free to post here and ask whatever you like. I love to talk marbles and I'm happy to give whatever useful opinion I can.

It might just be me, Art. But I have always made a distinction between "seams", which I see as playing a significant role in the marble's design, and "cut-offs" which are more tangential to it. When I think of seams, I think of purposeful construction. Seams essentially divide the marble's surface into two halves that can be manipulated independently. This gives rise to different perspectives. For instance, Some marbles like Vitro Whities appear to have a single color equatorial ribbon, and lots of people, myself included, refer to them as "single ribbon" marbles. This is taking the perspective of a viewer. A producer might see it as two equatorial ribbons, running seam-to-seam, one on each half of the marble I often tend to take the latter perspective. The reason I say this is because I wouldn't refer to a marble like a Vitro Whitie that had a red ribbon on one side and a green ribbon on the other half as a "single ribbon" marble. If it is the same color on both halves of the marble I think we call it a single ribbon from the perspective of viewers. Just look what the possibility of having two independent canvases has given us, everything from bifurcated marbles, to three or more different colors on each half of the marble (6+ total), to single color equatorial ribbons that many would refer to as patches. Cut-offs, on the other hand, I see as almost a necessary evil. It's just a fact of making marbles. I usually associate them with hand-gathered, including transitional, marbles and machine-made swirls. This is not to say that cut-offs play no role in the design of a marble. Pontils and Cat's Eyes are other stories altogether. All of this IMHO, of course.

And discussion is good. But it's important to keep in mind that these are random swirls, which makes them very tough to ID definitively, especially because outliers from various companies can look essentially identical. It's those sorts of cases where I just tell myself it's okay to have an unidentified marble, and worry more about the ones I have a better chance to ID definitively.

I hear you, Dave. It's great to finally be learning about marbles made in other countries and about how their marbles were marketed and distributed. And it sure leads you to new questions. But I always try to be aware that just because I have a new "hammer" everything does not suddenly become a "nail". In your 1st photo, I would probably identify 3/5 as American made. I think the top center and bottom marbles might be foreign. 🙂

Thanks a lot for taking the time to do this, Dave. I was mostly interested to see if there were any that might convince me they were Ravenswood. I do see two transparent swirls that look more RW to me than the others. But I am usually cautious with IDs. I would much rather have an unidentified marble than a misidentified marble. So while some of these transparent ones could be Ravenswood, I don't feel strongly enough about any of them to insist they are Ravenswood. Bottom line, I am conservative with IDs so you can imagine, I have a ton of transparent swirls that have yet to be fully identified. A lot of times, I might have a stronger opinion about what company did not make the marble than I do about which company actually did. This is just who I am, so assigning marbles to companies I am just beginning to learn about is not an easy exercise for me - I'll need enough evidence to make me comfortable. 🙂

@shiroaiko This is very interesting. You think my box is full of Seike's marbles? I always thought these were Veiligglas. Do you know which companies' marbles Cowan de Groot (CODEG) packaged? de Groot is a Dutch name so it's not a stretch to think they could have package Dutch marbles, although I assume they could have packaged marbles from a variety of sources.

There are cutoffs somewhere on or in these marbles but no "seams" on these - they're swirls. The first one does look mostly like a JABO contract run or other newer marble to me. The dark green surrounding the red looks sort of contrived IMO (I'm not convinced it's oxblood - at least not yet). As for the second one, Alley and Heaton both did these colors and I don't recall newer marbles that did - it wouldn't necessarily surprise me if they're out there though. If this one is vintage, and it looks it to me, I'd lean Heaton over Alley.

@Tommy This is a great marble and a cool example of what i think of as Pelt's "pink-wash". I am not sure what it is but there is something in this striping glass that almost appears to "leak out" onto the white base and stain it pink. I see it fairly often on Peltiers but it's not something I see much on marbles from other companies. Similar thing here, but now it's "leaking" out onto adjacent white ribbons instead of base glass. The gray baseball is great too. They're not that easy to find in my experience.

The marble front and center looks the most Vitro to me from this single view - probably because of the red.

This is very cool! It's reminiscent of a Vitro Jewel Tray. I've never seen anything quite like it. What exactly is it? And I was not meaning to sound harsh, I'm just big on original packaging in general and especially for verifying the identification of marbles from producers I don't have examples of or know much about myself. It's me, it's not you. 🙂

I agree this is early. I think I have a couple of similar ones that I have tentatively ID'd as Vitro. But I have never been completely convinced, mainly because of the construction, seams and colors. They are quite unusual for Vitro, IMO. Lately, I have been thinking more about other possibilities like maybe El Agila. But I don't know if El Aguila can have perpendicular seams like Vitros. It's a hard thing to tell from photos and I haven't had nearly enough in hand to know from experience.

They don't impress me as new. The left looks a little more Jabo-esque than the right, at least to me. But I would need more views of both to offer more.

That was definitely a good snag - it's a great example. If it's not already in the "Show us your Vitro's" thread, it should be.

As I remember, and I could be wrong, Ringers were essentially like corking Aces/Imperials so you may be very close, actually. @akroorka I agree, I think Imperials, Aces and Ringers are all basically the same marble in different configurations, and marketed in different ways, similar to Moss Agates, which also come in spiraling and non-spiraling variations.