BobBlock

That's a really bad pun Griff! Will New Hampshire ever be the same after you've blown through there?

With or without getting grief from them over it?

An update. I ran into Brian Estepp at Brimfield this morning and had a "chat" with him about the grading, and about the email I got from Morphy's. Regarding the grading, I feel he really is trying to do the best job he can, but he doesn't have adequate time to grade all the marbles in a sale. He sincerely wants to get the grading right. For instance, in this past sale which had over 700 lots of marbles, he had to get them all described, sized and graded over a 3-day period. That's almost 250 lots per day. I don't know about the rest of you who sell on Ebay or elsewhere, but when I'm cataloguing a marble auction, I feel I'm making good time if I can get through 20 lots an hour. And I consider that to be a fast speed. Regarding the email exchange I posted above, he says he'll make it right. I still doubt I'll bid in any future Morphy auctions, until I hear the grading has gotten better (and their office staff gets an attitude adjustment).

So, I sent them off an email this morning informing them I was returning the three misgraded lots and the reasons why they were misgraded. I was a bit disturbed by the email I received in return.: Bob, you can send them back for further review on our end to determine if refunds will be offered. This is not the first time we have had issues with your purchases and so immediate returns/refunds will not be offered. We will let you know what we have decided when they return. Mark the package to my attention. For the future, you will need to evaluate all marbles either in person or have a someone view them for you. Returns will not be accepted moving forward. We have a level of respect that needs to be given to our consignors and having issues like this each sale cannot continue. Please make proper arrangements for all future marble sales. FWIW, I have returned a few items in from sales over the past few years, but there have also been auctions where I've kept everything, so they are overstating the case. Here was my response. I seriously doubt I'll be bidding in any future Morphy auctions. Understood. But if you are going to solicit online bids based on reliance of your catalogue description, then you have a level of responsibility to ensure that your catalogue description is not materially different from reality. Anything less is negligence. If you can't meet that minimum standard then you shouldn't solicit online bids. The reason you have had items returned by me in the past is because you have not met that minimum level of diligence. So, don't be blaming me because you folks can't do your job properly! And, by the way, offering an item for sale that has clearly been reworked and is a fake is unconscienable and fraudulent. It is the responsibility of your firm to meet the minimum standards of conduct and expectation in your industry. It is not my responsibility to do your job for you.

Received my package from Morphy today. Out of 13 lots, 3 are going back for grading issues. 3 additional lots could have gone back because they are badly misgraded, but they are sulphide lots and I was going to have them polished anyways, so no harm no foul. The most grievous grading error is Lot 1576, which was two sulphides, both described as polished. In fact, the larger of the two is remelted and then encased in a polymer with a fake pontil added on. It is noticeably lighter than a marble its size would be. More disturbing is that it glows light green under a black light, because thin inner part in an old marble that is remelted.

It is an exceptionally rare box. But $3250? Wow!

They are Peltier. They might have gone high because each seems to have some red blended into one of the yellow ribbons. But that still seems like an excessive price.

His Facebook posts state that he should be back up and running in four or five days. Kiln overheated overnight, and set the wood bench it was sitting on on fire.

And your package is already in the mail :-)

Bump. The auction is tonight.

LOL. Francis is a great guy. He's a Canadian artist. Back in the late 1990s and early 2000s the Canadian government provided substantial support to a number of artists to develop their talents, and market their artwork to the US. Francis was one of those artists. He came to a number of marble shows. I'm not sure if he is still producing marbles or not.

Lawrence's gf's name was Sorel. I had drinks with them a few times in London. I think she may still set up on the sidewalk at Portabello.

The catalogue for Marble CyberAuction #1108 is now available. You can download a PDF version at my website at http://www.blocksite...-cyberauctions/ .Full bidding instructions are there as well. You can also view the catalogue, additional images, leave absentee bids or participate live at http://www.icollecto...n.aspx?as=27383 . There are 151 lots of marbles in this auction. Here are a few samples:

The bounty of CACs in the auction brought the price down overall. The sulphides tended to go cheap for the same reason.

The consignor is charged about 17.5%

Cool. I must have 300 or shows on DAT in the basement.

This reworking has been around for almost 20 years. Another clue is to look at the surface with a loupe under a very bright light. The surface will have very narrow concentric ripples around the marble. It's a bit hard to describe, but once you see it you don't forget what it looks like. I'll see if I have a pic of a closeup in my archives.

What I would give to be playing carpet balls with Lloyd by the pool at the Lenox Inn again.

Ron's a transparent green core. The colored bands are in the outer layer. Morphy had a marble yesterday that had a transparent colored core with strands on the core, and he categorized it as a jelly. So, I guess it varies by collector.

I found that sometimes when I hit the Bid button that I ended up getting in at two or three bid increments higher than I had hit. Which really annoyed me, because I didn't want to bid that high. I usually got outbid, but I did get burnt by it on one lot. Also, I had been declared the winning bidder on the first California Sulphide, and then he re-opened it when I turned away and restarted the auction. It ended before I turned back to the screen, and it was sold to the floor at the same price I had been declared the winner. So, I'm pretty pissed off about that one as well.

I, for one, am quite happy that we have a new collector. The first thing I collected before marbles was minerals, then chinese snuff bottles, and then marbles. Good to have a fellow mineralogist and sino-phile in the group.

It is a four-panel onionskin. Extremely well-loved :-)

The marble in the link is not a jelly core. It is a solid core made up of alternating bands, where one of the bands happens to be transparent red. A jelly core is a solid core where the core is completely a transparent color. It might have opaque strands floating above it, but the core layer can't have opaque strands or bands as part of its construction. Roger's example is a nice one.

It looks pretty clean, so I don't think polishing is going to add much to it. I generally don't have anything polished except sulphides. I'll only have a sulphide done if it is hazy. I usually advocate to people that they only polish a marble if they plan on keeping it and they want it to look better, not if they are going to resell it. If you're going to resell it, then polishing eliminates potential buyers who won't buy polished marbles.

Nice sulphide marble! The figure is usually classified by collectors as a razorback because of the upraised ridge on its back.