bumblebee

Gettin' Vittie wit it!

Your own Alley marble dig complete with original factory dirt isn't too shabby for being naughty. That's a nice little hive of bees! Now comes the hard part: waiting and resisting peeking.

Wow! That looks like great fun but do you (or any of us) have the patience to only open one compartment per day? Shuddering to think what might be in that stocking, though. Be careful! 😁

Very nice marble. Would seem an odd size to produce for a contemporary maker?

That is basically my theory. I don't think the collecting community at large fully appreciates what you just observed, that when Vacor does use higher quality glass, the resulting eye appeal in many cases is up there with some top shelf CACs. I know my finding two among another collector's Vacor lot is anecdotal and could have been his bias from cherry picking, but the eBay photos I showed earlier were not from a collector. In other words, he simply had a small handful of older Vacors. I stumbled upon them searching for Michaelangelo and immediately recognized these fellows. If I worked for Vacor right now I'd see a tremendous opportunity to release limited edition Premium Glass runs. 😀

Wow lots of aventurine on yours and what appears to be a big 9.

In hand it does not look handmade to me. Under a loupe its surface texture is exactly like that of those sharp Twisters I posted. Surface is covered with many small dimples. Looks very much like the 9/16" Dragon surface I got in the same lot. I don't have a lot of contemporary handmades, but the ones I looked at were extremely smooth with almost no dimpling. Here's all the views from that eBay auction of vacors that appears to have two of these and a 3rd oddball.

The forum will now accept (and re-size) images of any size, so no worries about shrinking images in order to post. I got two "Twisters" from the same guy who had the mystery marbles, and the quality of the glass had people assuming I had CACs at the show. I wonder if Vacor produces first run or "design run" versions of a given marble using the highest quality glass in order to create an ideal representation of the marble, then mass produces it using the cheaper glass. That's speculation to a degree, but it's widely known the early runs us higher quality glass.

Here's mine thanks to the iPhone. mystery_vacor_or_what.mov

Do you have photos of yours, especially the nine and tail you see? I seem to recall that some people were calling these "German circus" at one point but there was also another type of colorful marbles (with seams, maybe?) that others called a German circus.

Thanks for sharing more of your photos. My hunch equals your hunch. That being said, the examples I have found of the extremely vivid ones are all closer to 9/16" than 5/8". I sure wish we had insider knowledge from Vacor employees who could give insights.

It was a seller who had compiled his own box of Vacors, so definitely not original stock boxes. I only got two and then traded one so I've only seen two in hand.

He said he has "similar" but wants to search around to find them.

The two that I got from a Vacor bin at the OC Marble Show two years ago have specks of aventurine in the dark semi-transparent green, yes.

Anybody remember those small super bright mystery marbles that sort of resemble Vacor Dragons that showed up about 20 years ago and are always mint and often found with older Vacors? Now that I have seen the Vacor Guacamaya marbles, which were only released in Mexico, I'm betting my money they are an early run of those. Here's some Guacamayas: And here's images of the mystery marble (usually around 9/16") that some speculate was torch made or some German machine made. Thoughts? Impressions?

If I squint the peewee is definitely like the others!

Can't say I've ever seen a robo cat. Nice!

Did anyone by chance save photos of the damaged Bulgarian marbles from the auction? I could have sworn I had them somewhere.

I think you might be right. I'm saturated in sunbursts but very few comets. I did recently purchase one that had a similar black opaque base. Thanks.

I'm drawing a blank on this one. Was in a lot of 1940s/50s marbles.

Bought these on eBay from a seller who shipped them from Peru. Some collectors elsewhere couldn't find any Imperials in their collection that had these colors and construction. There is no "orange peel" on them and the white glass has a sort of chalky feel to it. Seams are very large. Older? Asians? Central/South American? My sense it they are probably an early Asian run from maybe the 80s?

For me I think it would be my fancier hand cut agates. One reason is their esteemed history. They are old veterans who were once the most valued and expensive marbles. Each one in unique. I feel a connection with history and the original owners to such a degree it would be a sort of betrayal to let them go. I feel more like their keeper than owner.

I like Al's bag-to-box conversion.

Dang that was a nice Vitro waterfall post by Ron. Steph should be proud of her Andre the Tri-lite

Some of colors look Mastery but I don't have any Masters with orange peel texture so I'd lean toward European too.