bumblebee

...it would tell me how on earth it stayed mint and made its way into a $20 jar of beat up vintage marbles. Either way, I'm not complaining!

(I am, however, tempted to ask the booth seller if they have more of these somewhere in an old box...)

Wow that really puts an extra twist on this day!

Is that other one a MK "beach ball" ?

2 hours ago, Steph said:

that's what I was thinking

 

Is the other a Whitie for a whitie Christmas?

That's a perfect Christmas cork!

Wow a spotted dick soccer ball. That's not something I've ever seen out in the wilds of America.

The swirl gets my patented "WV swirl" shrug.

This thread is getting me into the holiday spirit. Time to hang Christmas lights!

1 hour ago, Redneck2251 said:

Thank you very much. Are stone marbles o any value?

Hi, any collector would be happy to get genuine stone marbles from the 16th through 19th century, although most are very dull shades of gray and brown. I don't know that I'd pay more than $20 for a small pile of them unless it had a lot of variety or interesting colors. Some prettier antique "marble marbles" and pinkish "blood alley" types with red lines are certainly worth a few $ each though I rarely see them for sale. My personal favorite are the dyed hand cut and polished German agate marbles from the late 19th century, especially the bullseye types with high contrast bands. Typical nice examples fetch $5 to $30 each but fancy examples in bigger sizes or rarer colors like green and blue can command $40 to $60 each or more on occasion. Note that these are vintage ones evidenced by the hand-faceting channels visible on the surface under strong light or a loupe. Some vintage marble collectors also fancy the contemporary mineral spheres which some would call marbles, simply for their beauty.

That's a purty Jabo.

I admire your self-control. I cannot imagine being this patient with marble mail!

Very nice. If anything it has the spirit of oxblood.

4 minutes ago, Steph said:

LOL ... I tried to figure out what that big Moss Agate would be called today.  I even did both a Google search and a forum search.  But  I still wasn't sure.  

Ace Moss Agate Jolly Ringer

31 minutes ago, Al Oregon said:

OK Steph - now you have to identify the marble(s) in each day.  That'll help everyone.

Agreed. She needs to sweat a little bit more than from just opening them. So far it's been mostly Vitty but today I'm seeing a monster Akro.

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?

44 minutes ago, BuckEye said:

On a side note, I’m hoping they are vacor and we can prove it . The black, yellow and orange ones do fool a lot of people and there is a definite type that has higher quality glass that rivals cac when put next to each other.  Like someone said before, the early michaelangelos are sweet.  IMHO, if it could be proven, there might be an early run of each type that is just stellar and highly collectible. This is way better than the vague “German circus” that is probably hearsay 

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.

6 minutes ago, stephenb said:

Bumblebee, maybe your marble doesn’t quite match up to the ones I’ve posted. I’m a little stumped on it to be honest. Does it look machine made to you ? 

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.

2 hours ago, Nantucketdink said:

ugh, that came out tiny.  It is Vacor paperwork IDing the Guacamaya top left.  Same marble as Dragon.  Their example doesn't include the nice extra colors or other variations that can show up in marbles

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.

52 minutes ago, machinemades said:

I have one that I thought was German circus is very similar to this in colors but I am not 100% sure. Mine has a handgathered 9 and tail, loaded with very fine silver and green aventurine in transparent green ribbons at both poles and has the thick egg yolk properties on yellow ribbons.

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. 

5 hours ago, stephenb said:

Hello, I believe your marble is in fact Vacor Guacamaya , here are a few examples. They seem to generally have :  two shades of green in the base , the darker green is translucent. They also seem to have yellow ribbons , paired by either orange, purple or coral ribbons. Those are just my observations , they are not Mega Marbles Dragons , but they were made by Vacor de Mexico and marketed and sold  in Mexico . I hope this helps . -Stephen 

 

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.

1 minute ago, BuckEye said:

Ok that’s interesting.  They came from stock boxes? I have some from vacor that don’t and then there are these with the green av all over the trans green. 

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.

On 11/15/2019 at 6:27 PM, Steph said:

Have you had any exchanges with Ricardo Mendoza on Facebook?  He has some wonderful Vacors from 60's and 70's.   I don't know what he knows about 20 years ago, but worth asking.

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

On 11/16/2019 at 9:03 PM, BuckEye said:

The ones you are comparing to have aventurine in the transparent green.  Do yours?

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?