Ric

@Fire1981 No problem, it was kinda fun - a different perspective, huh? Honestly, before I did this little calculation, I would have thought more too. But 1-out-of-3 or 1-out-of-4 vintage WVSs being Alley seems about right, maybe a little low, especially if you exclude Alox, JABO, DAS and SMM from the WVS equation. @Tommy All good questions. Of course, the ideal would be to know exactly how many WVSs were produced by each company, period, but you have to start somewhere. 🙂

Here is one way to think about it. There were nine companies that made WVS, if you exclude Alox of MO. Ravenswood (1928-1955) 27 yrs Alley (1929-1947) 18 yrs Alox (ca 1938-1948) 10 yrs Champion (1938-2005) 67 yrs Playrite (1940-1947) 7 yrs Jackson (1945-1946) 1 yr Cairo (1946-1952) 6 yrs Heaton (1946-1971) 25 yrs Davis (1947-1948) 1 yr Mid-Atlantic (1990-2004) 14 yrs There were about 166-176 company years of WVS marble production (including or excluding Alox of MO). If we assume that yearly production was the same at all factories (it was certainly not) we can calculate that Alley would be responsible for 10.2% of production. I would guess this figure is low, since Alley was very productive and some of the other companies were not, but I would guess that Alley did not produce more than 25-35% of WVSs.

@shiroaiko B. Shackman marketed this ceramic statue of JP Buster & Kitty Cucumber playing marbles (1985). It is shown on page 14 of Yukoh Morito's book. 🙂 Photos from an Ebay auction

@YasudaCollector Shackman's #4721 box holds big marbles (~ 1-1/8") and I think they were pretty popular here.

I think #1 is a Vitro caged Cat's-eye and 2-3 are Vitro Hybrid Cat's-eyes - #2 is very pretty. I can't tell much about #4 from this single view but #5 doesn't look American to me.

I think your feeling is correct, they look like JABO Classics to me too.

@shiroaiko I agree with, Art. I too am happy you are here! And now you are showing some of my favorite marbles - swirls with lots of transparent glass. They are very nice!

It looks like the base is a kind of smoky transparent color, almost makes the marble look black in spots. It doesn't look a lot like the Champion I was thinking about based on the last pics but I am still leaning that direction, especially if the base is smoky purple.

Looking at the pattern, colors and finish, I think I am looking at one of the best imposters I've seen.

For some reason your camera often seems to be focusing on the background (wood grain) and not the marble - you may want to back off a little bit. I have seen people take excellent photos by resting their phone on top of a glass and putting the marble right under the lens. Distance from the lens to the marble, steadiness and lighting are key. Your set-up doesn't need to be fancy or anything, just consistent. Once you find what works best you can just stick with it. 🙂

The first is a West Virginia Swirl (WVS), probably Alley, and the second is a Peltier Rainbo. Not sure about the purple on white WVS you posted just above these. Both nice Vitros, IMO. The two on the right in the 1st pic and the lower one in the 2nd pic are Peltier Rainbos. To me, the left one in the first pic looks mostly Akro from this single view. The top marbles in the 2nd photo is another WVS. It looks mostly Alley to me but it might be another company. It's hard to ID many WVS with only a single view. I think it might be easiest for everyone if you start a new topic for each marble you want to identify. You could number them to make keeping track easier, like "Cato ID Request #1", for instance. Using a consistent format will make them easier to search for too. Ten years from now you will be able to search "Cato ID Request", maybe limit the search to "Topic Titles Only", and every one off the posts should pop right up.

It's a very large Vacor - watch your toes!

Yup, I see Vacor too.

I agree with Vacor for both.

Looks mostly JABO to me - maybe one of the contract runs, but it might be a SMM or DAS too. It's not striking me as vintage.

Vacor to me too.

I agree with Art, the finish says it all - Vacor.

I'm not exactly sure what it is but your photos look off to me - sorta dark and fuzzy. Champion, Ravenswood and others made marbles similar to this and I would need clearer images to make a better ID, but at the moment I would lean Ravenswood.

It's hard for me to tell from the single view here, a few look more Heaton than others but there are similar Champions too.

The photos and colors look a little off to me. Nonetheless, I'll go with Champion for this marble, 1980s NOF, I think.

I'm with Art and Marble King - the orange color is great!

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!