kbobam

Thanks very much for all the time you did spend getting great shots of gorgeous stuff! ( :

Thanks very much for the great close-up of the Cat. It's beautiful. ( :

Hi Edna! When (I mean 'if'!) you get some sprinkles, please take another photo! All the marbles are terrific, as might be expected from all those terrific people. But I'm curious about the one in the lower left of the photo. It has a distinct 'original Joker' feel to it, at least in the loose way I look at things. Was anyone 'going' for this, or is it just another wonderful variation? ( :

"...and so it starts lol..." Besides liking the great marbles, I especially liked this line from your note. You know you're in trouble, but whatchagonna do? Maybe one or two other people here have had a similar sudden realization? ( : When it's happened to me, it's always been a James Earl Jones-like voice. AND SO IT STARTS! HAHAHAHAHA!

Magnificently motley! What a great group! And nice lighting for the transparent and translucent areas. Any chance of any more photos or info regarding the marble which extends the furthest to the left in the first photo? It's reminding me of my all time favorite Jabo Blood Viper/ Cobra/Cyclone. Thanks, Bob

I used a polarizing filter on this shot, and think I'll probably make that a habit from now on. It greatly reduces any reflection of the sky, and seems to let the marble pattern come through more clearly. ( :

I'm pretty sure this mib is from Jabo's 'March Madness' run. The photo is my latest experiment with the HDR techniques described in another post. Although it's no 'work of art' I consider it a huge success since this is one DARK marble. Originally I was hoping that the multiple-exposure process would help with certain marbles that for no particular reason are just very difficult to get a good shot of. But in this case we're talking about a marble which in-hand pretty much looks black, and isn't very impressive regardless of lighting conditions. So it's pretty thrilling to have found a way to show all the great stuff buried inside! ( :

(Oh, we're just crying out for a "That's what SHE said!" here, but I'm going to resist the temptation!) Rich, all that gorgeous red glass is clearly from a while back, before the FDA banned red colors that look that good. Please don't eat any of it! Also really like this piece of Alan's. Looks like sushi! ( :

Wow. Great stuff. I've been talking too much lately, so I'll just mention that I LOLed at the blue and yellow spaghetti. Not in fun, it just made me happy. ( :

Awesome. One of the best 'other uses for marbles' items ever! ( :

Is the implication that these are yours now? That must have been some friend, and I'm sorry for your loss. Bob

(Sorry if this comes through twice. Something wasn't working right.) Holy cow, Alan! I'll just put in my two cents on a few for now. The 'spaghetti brain' is outrageous and terrific. Think I might have one of the same glass as your red and mustard yellow. Beautiful colors. But mine's a little rough overall. Yours has a wonderful combination of the overall smooth texture with the 'patch' of spaghetti. (Yes! I said it out loud! In the world of cullet, a 'patch' can be defined by texture!) And your favorite. I guess mine, too. Unbelievable psychedelic colors which would be enough by themselves, but it has gold and diamonds in it too! Nice. ( :

Hey Galen! Thanks for the warning. Don't know much, if anything, about re-melting glass. Personally, as much as I enjoy the marbles themselves, I've always been most interested in trying to achieve really great photos of them. (Mixed success!) After that, I'm happy to keep them but even happier to give them away to anyone who'd be truly thrilled to get them. So in this case I have the great shots of the cullet, and think it's worth the risk to see if something awesome might happen. ( :

Yo Bo! The original piece you posted is is really cool. I only have a slight passing knowledge of it because I enjoy checking out Akro Agate items, and this is often considered to be one of them, although to the best of my limited understanding the Houze description given by Smitty is correct. Think there's a similar Akro unit, but it's shaped differently. What's really great is that you found one with the guts intact. More times than not you can only find the glass part available. Presumably it's a cigar/cigarette/whathaveyou lighter, although it seems to confuse a lot of people. I've seen fancy auction houses list it as "Night Light (?)"

Thanks, Rich! I think it's time I fess up here. You've made a point of saying in your writings (and thanks for all of them, too!) that "Glass will do what IT wants to do". I've always thought of this statement as a kind 'caveat emptor' from someone who knows his material of choice intimately and has great respect for it. But there've been a few times late in the evening, when I've been in a 'meditational' way, that things have gone beyond that and I've actually heard this piece of glass tell me what it wants to do. And it wants to (re)produce some beautiful 'well-rounded' babies. I know it's a lot to ask, but if you'd ever consider being a surrogate and helping this glass achieve its dream, you're certainly its first choice, and we'd both be grateful and honored. ( :

Three pounds? In marble terminology that's a 'boulder' isn't it? Here's my favorite, with three different points of view. (Sorry if this is a re-post. Can't remember.)

Thanks for all the good info and other stuff, Steph! Even enjoyed the additional non-marble content pages in the old magazine. Mike, the box-load is definitely impressive looking. I'm almost certain that the 'blue moon' is the same marble which I refer to as my 'large' one. I described it to Steph recently, and neglected to mention the blue aspect. What I did say was that it's the most 'alive' marble I've ever seen. Seriously, you could strike a match in a pitch black room and that marble would light up ten feet away from you. Light it up more and it's like a miniature version of one of those disco balls with the little mirrored tiles. I always guessed that it was a Vacor, although I've never seen it in their listings and the surface finish lacks the imperfections that many of their runs seem to have. ( :

Neat box! Some of the marbles seem to tend toward pink and some toward green. Mine are all greenish when in a low light total non-glow state, although I've seen pink moonies for sale. Any story behind the distinction? Thanks. ( :

Hi Winnie! Pseudo-oxblood can be terrific, as you've clearly shown. Below is one of my favorite marbles of all time, an Akro with another oxblood 'variation'. Please forgive the silly photo. It was probably taken during 'happy hour'. Also, hoping that Friday evening is a good time to go 'a little bit out there' and say that the angle in the largest marble in your photo is giving me a really great animal impression. Looks like a cobra/bird combo! ( :

From what I've seen so far, there are definitely some situations where the combining of multiple exposures can really make your life easier. I took a wide angle test shot of the full expanse of my humble apartment the other day. The lighting ranged from nonexistent to bright lightbulb total bleach-out. End result came out came out so well-balanced that it looked like experienced architectural photography people had spent an entire day setting up lights, reflectors, etc. It was impressive. Personally, I'm no good with the photo editing programs, so this is great for me, and for someone like you who's good with them it could certainly save some time, and possibly make a better image by starting off with something that requires less post-processing. Hoping to take and post some shots of other 'difficult' marbles soon. I'm still in a Jabo state of mind, and thinking about certain Last Dance and March Madness marbles which really require perfect lighting conditions to be fully appreciated. With a little luck the multiple exposure technique will give a result that's closer to what our brains see in hand than a standard photo would be. ( :

Thanks for posting the link. Yes, this shot combines a normal exposure with an under and an over exposed one. If you right-click/properties on the photo you can see that the program saved it as P9127098_099_101_fused.png, which shows the name of the first frame used, and the last three digits of subsequent ones. This can be handy, so I don't change the filenames. I was very happy to have the color come out as it did. A shot like this isn't normally the sort of situation where HDR techniques are called for, but as we all know, some marbles just don't seem to photograph well no matter what you do. Was hoping that Photomatix might help out, and so far results are encouraging. Here's a comparison to a normal exposure.

I like these marbles so much, that the idea of someone melting them to make stands feels a little like sacrilege. On the other hand, the end result is pretty nice. Just don't know.... This is the first HDR (high dynamic range) marble photo I've taken. As you can sort of see from the 'watermark', it was done with Photomatix software, which is a mind-blowing program. I'll definitely be losing the watermarks and purchasing the program in the near future. Any camera-heads who aren't familiar with HDR photography should definitely check out the Photomatix site. Seriously. It'll rock your world.

And yes. It definitely has an impatiens 'aura' to it, although you're apparently seriously spiritually developed if you can sense that from the photo. I can only see it with the marble in hand.

Thanks everyone! The marble was described as an Akro. Glad I looked back at the listing, because I was going to tell you it was 5/8 of an inch and apparently it's a whopping 43/64ths. ( : The base has an overall orange glow under fairly strong direct light. But there are subtle milky swirl patterns internally, and even with a more moderate light source if you hold the marble at just the right angles you can see a couple spots which give an appearance of almost transparent orange. A 'Super Saturday' to all, Bob

Ooof!