bumblebee

I'm with Schmoozer. I have too many of certain types (like Vitro Tiger Eyes) that I have no practical way of displaying (enjoying) so I want to thin those out and focus on displaying the favorites creatively. I'm also thinking of putting all my individually stored "odd ball" marbles into a single container that I can look at all the time. So many weird ones bunched together would be far more interesting to my eyes, though my instinct to not have mint marbles touching may need some coaxing.

Very sorry to hear this. I enjoyed many of his posts over the years.

Merry Christmas to you too. We had a dusting of snow this AM but as you can see, the sun is going to take it away. I won't complain about getting snow and sun on Christmas Eve!

Wow....all incredible marbles. I don't even know what the top one is, but I found myself making cave man noises over it. Hope to see more angles of them after Christmas. Clearly you are worthy of these nice marbles. Thank you for sharing the joy of extended Christmas marble mail with us!

Very nice assortment of Christmas colors. That reminds me, I still have a lot of shopping to do!

Goal keeper!

Wow nice Easter Egg. The case would look nice anywhere in the house and you could use it to train guests to spot marbles you like next time the find them in the wild.

Hah! I believed you. I wouldn't fault you for it. Peeking isn't the same as opening according to some scholars.

Nice meaty Master and an Andre the Bee.

Finally, my mint-range slags have a place called home. No more plastic show-off trays for these classics! Edit: for the pixel peepers, yes I snuck a few Japanese "transitionals" in there.

I'm flirting with other collecting hobbies, but nature photography is becoming my other hobby since I moved to MT. Another collecting hobby I've been drawn to are the vintage tobacco cards. They're small, generally very affordable, and have vast topics and neat artwork.

media.io_IMG_1095.mp4

For $80 locally, I picked this up and couldn't be happier. Three trays that each hold 312 5/8" marbles (two per compartment) and a deeper bottom tray for bulk marbles. Primary con is that since the marbles "wiggle" in the concave slots, you can't position them ideally and keep them in place. Pro side effect of that is a really neat wiggling marble sound when you open the trays. Don't think I'll be putting glass killers in here except maybe shooters, but the agates feel very right displayed this way.

That one's crazy. I didn't even see that one when I checked a day or two ago. I may have bid had I seen it. I call it a Silly String.

Nice! Only 10 days left!

Some sort of phantom conqueror? A biscuits and gravy (never seen one of these in the wild), and what at first glance appears to be a chunky hybrid cat?

When I was a kid I thought Mr. Bill was the greatest thing ever. You darn near nicknamed that marble a Mr. Bill but the colors just don't quite conjure him.

Wow some of those are quite mesmerizing.

Hey, who slipped a cannon ball in there?

Yahoo!'s famous forum Groups are shutting down December 14, among them The Marble Collectors Club - The Best Identification Photos of all Clubs which began in 1999. Some old timers may remember it. For posterity, I saved an archive of all the messages. Yahoo! provided it in a large text file which I've attached here. Not particularly a friendly format, but you can search it for keywords. yahoo_group_marble_collectors_club.txt

I want to but nothing so far has grabbed my imagination and sense of beauty like marbles, not to mention the thrill of the hunt aspect where condition is king.

Now we're cooking with gas! My 2nd favorite after that on-fire Euro swirl. You should do this every year, Steph!

Took me about 45 minutes to accept it wasn't a contemporary remake, but later, under a loupe, I could see micro flea bites and the glass in better light, and I knew it was vintage. Ah the simple ecstasies of this hobby. If only they were more frequent!

I really need to contact this booth seller and see where she fished this from. Maybe she's got an original box at home!

I guess I don't get to gripe about our high of 34 today. Is that Christmas CAC?