bumblebee

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.

Similar to past "favorite marbles" threads, what are some marbles you have seen that you wish you could own? This could be a long list so try to keep it to the top 5 or so. Let's just safely assume that we all want a wet mint guinea. For me right now (all in wet mint condition of course): Big Vitro Neon Conqueror One of those purple/yellowish Canadian transitionals 3/4" Akro limeade heavy on the oxblood A truly wildly vivid Akro sparkler (saw one once and offered $90 for it but the guy wouldn't budge) 3/4" hand cut blue or green agate with tons of bullseye rings Edit: Interesting I forgot to put other types of handmades in there. I guess I'm a machine made guy through and through!

Hi @Al Oregon, the issue was my host was blocking file names that contain apostrophes as a security measure. They removed that rule so we should be OK.

@Al Oregon can you try again and if it happens, let me know the exact size and measurements of the image? Trying to think of a way I can get it to try it. Support is asking for me to reproduce the problem.

Great food for thought as always, John! That video is very fascinating and I need to re-watch it a couple of times. Based on your comments about process and trial and error, I speculate they likely spent more time during their early production of the heavily clear-based Sunbursts to end up with those earlier examples (such as what we call the Tiger Eye) with their more vivid colors and less "blending". In #25, they describe what to me sounds like a perfect recipe for later Sunburst marbles, basically dumping a lot of colored glass without control into a large body of clear glass: From here we could speculate that their earlier runs were a challenge to produce consistently, so they started mixing in far more colored glass to produce what are the more common and familiar "blended" sunbursts that rarely have clear base glass. I have updated my original patent suit link to a far superior version that contains images.

I was reading over the 1937 lawsuit by Akro against Master where it is clearly described that Master had a clear glass tank they dumped molten or gob glass into to produce (presumably) their entire Sunburst line. It's great reading and I regret not digesting it more earlier. Perhaps @Shamrock Marbles can help me here, but the very distinct Tiger Eye marble by Master appears to always have a) a lot of clear base glass, and b) orange, red, and purple glass. My understanding is these more clear-based glass Master Made marbles are their earliest marbles. Later we see the familiar brownish/fall colored sunbursts with less clear base glass. The questions I hope to find answers for are: 1. How did Master get such a consistent Tiger Eye marble? Were they simply dumping just those three colors into their single clear glass tank for a time and that's that? 2. How come so many Master Sunbursts have brownish/fall colors (presumably their later productions) and seem to "blend" more? I recall once that Rich (Santa) said that in some colors spontaneously appear under the right chemical conditions so I was wondering whether Master just dumping gobs or molten glass into the clear base glass was causing these typically brownish colors by some chemical process (rather than they were actually dumping 'brown" glass into the pots)? So much we don't know!

Painful, but therapeutic. Just discovered that I no longer have a photo of the 21/32" wet mint Peltier silver Wasp with super thick aventurine that I gave away, and I feel better not seeing it anymore.

Thanks, Ron. It really stood out in a lot of almost no other WV swirls so I'm glad I picked it up. Sure would love to have seen wet mint bags of these back in the day.

Sounds like a delightful big sorting job. Feel free to share photos here if you can for help.

So it's an Alley posing as a hand-gathered or a hand-gathered posing as an Alley?

Thanks. I've re-uploaded slightly better pictures.

This 5/8" one caught my eye. I assume it's just an Alley Swirl but check out that nine!

I've been playing with this tool for increasing resolution of photos. Results on the old Runningrabbit 200x200 photos are very impressive, although no doubt it could affect the true texture of a marble. So in the photos below, the small photos are the original photos and the bigger ones are resized and enhanced using some math voodoo.