Ric

Thanks, Art - I thought you might have seen it. I am not so sure it's that common though, since I have not seen another, not as far as I recall anyway. Think of how many Master American Indian Chief bags you've seen by comparison. Do you think you have seen as many of these bags? Thanks for your thoughts, and I would love to see a photo of your bag for comparison.

Gail definitely had some dandies! Congratulations, Melissa - I'm glad you got them!

@davesnothere Do I see traits reminiscent of "mushroom marbles" on some of these?

@davesnothere And you thought nobody would miss you or your marbles. 🙂 Thanks to you, I may have solved a mystery. I have wondered about these marbles since I purchased all of them together at an estate auction in Northern Kentucky about 25 years ago. I showed them around quite a bit and the consensus was always "Not Vitro, probably crazy Marble Kings" but I was never too comfortable with that ID. This is probably the surest I've ever been about them, so thanks for that! Please tell me what you know about them. Are they fairly common up there? All these marbles were together in the same lot. I need to get them all back together again for a new photo shoot. 😄 Now if I can just find them!

@davesnothere I could easily see them being from the same manufacturer. I imagine if you kept the amount of color about the same and added more base to make bigger marbles mine would morph into yours. Now I'll have to find the other variants that came with them . . .

I look at the two big ones you posted and these, and I wonder . . .

I recently acquired this great marble bag, as supple as the day it was made. It belonged to a boy named Harry W. Lynch, Jr. (1918-2004) of Blackshire Road in Wilmington, Delaware. How do I know this? Because beyond etching his initials on the front of the bag, Harry embossed his whole name and address on the back. From the looks of it, I am guessing that he was a fastidious child. He also seems to have been a traveler or a dreamer, or both, since he was sure to include "USA" in his full "return-to" address on the back of the bag. As it turns out, Harry was from a notable Wilmington family and had a spirit of volunteerism. He also enjoyed collecting enough himself to leave a significant newspaper masthead collection behind at St. Bonaventure University. This is good stuff in my book. The American Indian graphic on this bag is not known to me, at least at the moment. So please let me know if you have any information about this particular style of bag. It almost looks as if Harry himself could have drawn it. Thanks!

@Al Oregon Great additions - thanks a lot, Al. That Kate Greenaway bucket wasn't on my radar - I think the Kitty Cucumber version would be similar. Here is one of the Tic-Tac-Toe games @Mojo posted a few years back. This one, or a very similar version, appeared in a 1974 Shackman catalogue.

I had to come back after remembering the similarity to this Seike example that @shiroaiko posted on March 22. I think there is a possibility that your marble is kin to this one. Seike did made "horseshoe-style cat's eyes" - not sure if that's the best thing to call them though.

@shiroaiko, @davesnothere I have really been enjoying these posts! And I will need to go through my Vitro archive after seeing some of the marbles - that is probably where I would have sorted them. 🙂

It looks like a very pretty Vienna Vitro to me - an older Tri-lite, in my mind.

Welcome to The Marble Connection, Lisa. This is a great place to start! What you have is a small collection of vintage marbles. Nothing jumps out at me as being expensive. In fact, my first look suggests they are relatively common types. The single color transparent or opaque marbles are "board game marbles" and are of little if any interest to collectors. Many of the cat's eyes and common West Virginia swirls also have little value. Having said that, there are a few Vitros, Akros, and others that might be more collectible, all IMHO, of course.

It's a very pretty marble no matter who made it - I am weighing Master vs Asian but it looks a bit more like a Pincer or Imperial type to me.

I don't know MK names very well but I don't think I've heard one for this - pretty blend though!

I could maybe see Mexico but I am still leaning Asian - some of them can look surprisingly like American marbles.

I recently acquired a box of Japanese Cat's Eyes imported by B. Shackman & Co, which began in the Flatiron Novelty District of New York City (1898-1985). They specialized in marketing novelty and gift items and were long enough lived to have experienced the boom and the bust of the American machine made marble industry, which makes them interesting to me. Daniel Shackman Jacoby (1914-2008), the grandson of founder Bertha Shackman, ran the Company for many years (ca. 1935-1985), and appears to have been actively importing machine made marbles from Europe and Asia during the time when imports of foreign marbles exploded in the late 1950s. I thought it might be fun to learn more about the company's marble offerings. Unlike major jobbers of imported marbles like Penny King, this company appears to have been interested as much in packaging and presentation as product, and it appears to have chased prices across Asia to find an exporter that could meet the needs of their seemingly limited number of marble box imports. I decided to share my efforts to learn more here since I am not getting any younger and it'll probably not be too long before I need crib-notes. One of Shackman's imports appears to have originated in the Netherlands but was apparently packaged in Germany and imported from there. This poly-net bag was posted by @BuckEye in 2017. The marbles are Veiligglas and dating of the bag closure, thanks to @Shamrock Marbles, suggests that the marbles could have been packaged as early as the 1960s. However, warehoused Veiligglas marbles were packaged in poly-net bags long after the company closed in 1961. Many of the bags were simply knotted, with no closure device or labeling. Perhaps @Mojo knows more about these later poly-nets. Here is an example of a Shackman #4721 box I recently found (2-1/2" x 3-3/4" x 1-1/4"). The box is labelled Super Deluxe Jumbo Multi Color Marbles (Marked Japan, #4721). This is one of a few different versions of Shackman's #4721 box. I think this may be an earlier example (1960s). The marbles are a just shy of 1-3/16" (30 mm). Note that the top and sides of the lid are entirely covered by paper, which includes the graphic labeling. I am thinking that @shiroaiko might know more about this box and its contents. In another Japanese version of Shackman's #4721 Super Deluxe Jumbo Multi Color Marbles box (Marked Japan, #4721) the paper label covers only the top of the lid. I think this version is later than the one above. It is also the only version of the Japanese import I have seen with 1-1/8" three-color marbles in it. Photo from WorthPoint. Next is one of Shackman's Taiwanese imports labelled SIX JUMBO Kate Greenaway Marbles (Marked Taiwan; No. 4721). The marbles are 1-1/8" and the box includes instructions for playing "Ring-taw". A recent auction description remarked, "The marbles are made in Hong Kong. Circa 1970-1975" (Block's Marble Auction #1160, Lot 361, 8/24/24). Perhaps @BobBlock will be kind enough to clarify the discrepancy between the auction description and the box label. Screen Capture from Block's Marble Auctions. Another example of the Kate Greenaway box from Pinterest. What I believe is one of Shackman's last imported marble box offerings is from Hong Kong and is labeled Six Fancy Jumbo Kitty Cucumber Marbles. It was produced in 1984 (Marked Hong Kong, #40513, 1984). An example was posted by @Steph in 2007. Note that this is not a variant of the #4721 box like those above. It is smaller (3-1/8" x 2-1/8" x 1") and holds 1" marbles. But like the Kate Greenaway box from the 1970s, it too contains instructions for playing "Ring taw". I think Shackman also marketed a small Kitty Cucumber tin pail filled with cat's-eye marbles and instructions for game play. And throughout the 1960s-1970s they offered a variety of other imported marble-related novelties including: a Handmade Hardwood Oxbow Puzzle (Marked Japan; No. 3664), a Labyrinth Marble Maze Game (Marked Japan), and a Handcrafted Hardwood Tic-Tac-Toe Game (Marked Japan or Taiwan Rep. of China; No. 3380), to name a few. I would like to learn more about B. Shackman & Co.'s boxed marble products, especially a timeline for their offerings, so please add any information you have! And here's to hoping someone is sitting on a stack of Shackman's catalogues!

The sampler box is a prize for any collector -the intact paperwork and bags are a plus too, thanks for showing it! I think the large marbles are also Tiger Eyes (or close relatives - it's hard to be certain from this single view). And that makes sense to me, since Dulites would be a step down in quality (and price) compared to the Tiger Eyes, so putting them in the space reserved for shooters would have been bad marketing IMO - I have a hard time thinking they would have filled the player space with only fancy Tiger Eyes and then put only duller Dulites in the space for shooters. Although, I might be able to imagine a 60/40 split between Tiger Eyes and Dulites in both of those spaces.

This marble is folded and the seams are pinched together - it looks mostly like a JABO or Vitro, as far as structure goes, although it could be a CAC, theoretically. In the end,I am playing the odds that this marble is foreign - perhaps Vacor, like Art said.

I'm with Tommy - Alley is what I see too.

I'm thinking the second one you posted is Ravenswood - not sure I've seen one with AV, nice marble.

With respect to my comment, I did not mean anything personal toward you and I am sorry that it came out that way. What I meant was that with marbles like this it's likely you will have multiple groups of people who agree on different IDs - there are several potential makers in the mix. I personally think Kokomo is on the lower end of the scale of possibilities. At the upper end, I have Marble King and foreign. I have seen many of the latter with three neat ribbons of different colors and I do not think that the nice seams on your marble rule them out, so that is the way I am leaning. Just my two cents, please take it for what it's worth. 🙂

I need to dig through some marbles and get back to this one, @Tommy.

Some people agree the earth is flat too.

Great, I am very interested to see more photos of the box and contents - especially the marbles they refer to as Dulites.

Many if not all of the marbles you show in your box appear to be Vitro Tiger Eyes. Type I Tiger Eyes are the only ones with three colors.