Ric

A group of vintage marbles but nothing stands out as particularly valuable. There may be a couple of interesting ones but most are very common types, IMO.

@VaMarbles Great action in a few of those! @disco005 Crazy bright colors! Here's a 3/4" twofer this Slag & Swirl Saturday . . .

@YasudaCollector Congratulations! You have earned an elite membership in The Society of Clay Marble Sorters! Worldwide membership has now doubled - who knows where we'll go from here! But seriously, clay marbles range from difficult to impossible to sort, let alone attribute to a particular company, although it sure can be fun trying. Over the years I have come across many groups of clay marbles in larger collections, and I always do my best to sort them. In my experience, when you find a larger group of clays in one collection, you can often sort at least some of them, more or less - success seems largely lot-dependent. But if you do this often enough you can assemble some pretty nice groups of clay marbles, some of which may look very similar or not to other groups you've assembled over the years. I know this probably seems odd to many people but I've never met a marble I didn't care to sort - even a commie, it's one of my favorite things to do! It could be fun to post some pictures of common clay marbles. It would be interesting to see the different marbles and groups that people post. I know there are some really nice clay marbles out there. Maybe we'll get to see some of them! And your thread has the perfect title, and a beautiful opening photo of clay marbles too! I'll bet I could match a few of them. 😉

Cool one! Some hyper-bubbly Peltier Rainbos have so much air trapped in them you'd almost think they might float!

The color and pattern looks Ravenswood to me, even though 3/4" would make it a big one and much less common. A 3/4" Alley would be way more common but it's still my second choice.

I think they used limestone marbles in industrial roller mill operations back in the day.

This is a great photo - it's nice glass, just a beaten up old warrior. The dings and debris make it look like an asteroid or something - probably some kids favorite.

Is it possible there is damage obscuring the other pontil, which should be pretty much opposite the one you can see? It sort of looks that way to me.

There are some hand-gathered marbles that only have one pontil - they are fully hand-made, no machine involved. Some people might call the single cut-off on a transitional marble a "pontil" too - I am not usually one of them. 😉

Oh yeah, it's clear from these photos - nice mica. What is this horizontal feature I see in photo #3? I think I see it in photo #1 too. Can you feel it? Is it sort of a groove?

@davesnothere It looks like some of those in the box might qualify as German (or Euro) slags or striped transparents. What do you think?

@davesnothere As for Akro . . . plenty of sparklers were sold outright and most dug ones probably wouldn't pass QC.

@davesnothere I don't really think of the marbles from TGI as thin and dull.

I agree with Euro Sparkler but I often wonder if this type was actually made there. I would not call them "whispler" types. I'm pretty sure they're not Veiligglas. And they look different than the "sparklers" made at the Technische Glaswerke in Ilmenau, Germany. Could they have been imported to Europe from elsewhere, perhaps Asia? I imagine there must have been other factories producing machine-made "sparkler" types in Europe. But what do we really know about the origin of marbles like this one?

@disco005 Nice ones, Jess - I like that old-school-looking spiral the most!

@Tommy It's remarkable - that cane had tight pin-stripes!

I think that's a machine-made marble that got spun - hard to tell who made it though. It happened from time to time.

Wow, those are some great examples, Melissa - beautiful!

I think #1 (Lazy Cork/Patch), #4 (Auger Corkscrew), #5 (Patch) are Akro, I don't see mica in #2. I agree #3 is Master (Brushed Patch). #6 is hard to tell without more views. #7 looks like a Ravenswood and #8 looks like a weak Alley Chalky to me.

Sometimes less is better - light mint green and purple - nice!

Here's a nice little score that I had totally forgotten about - one of the few benefits of getting older, kinda like two scores in one!

I will add, since Harry was born in 1918 we could safely date this bag from mid-1920s to mid-1930s - near a century now, older than one might expect. It's also interesting how enduring the American Indian motif is on vintage marble pouches and packaging. It likely persisted into the 1970s. This is all very interesting to me, for some reason. 🙂

@akroorka Here's a peek into the maw of Harry's bag so you can see the 2-layer leather construction . . . The inner layer is still in good shape too. 🙂

This one is nuts, Tommy - is that 16-18 outer bands? I'm having a hard time keeping track. 🙂

Here's a neat marble, a sloppy, choppy and drizzly version of a favorite Ravenswood - found it at the Pride of the Prairie show last weekend.