BobBlock

This guy has had several colored and rare sulphides on Ebay over the past couple of months. There have been a number of rare and unusual handmades that have come out of India in the past 15 years. I think Laurence might have been the first person who was sourcing them from there. It makes sense that marbles arrived there with the Europeans since India was a European Colony until 1947.

The brown one pictured above was the one I was referring to. The green one here bothers me. The swirling green is not the color or type of glass you would see in "traditional" colored sulphides. While I haven't seen this particular fish before, that doesn't mean anything because I haven't seen every one of the marbles from the CA Sulphide group, only about 35 or 40. The surface detail I can see at the right and left edges bothers me. Quite frankly, if I was cataloguing this one, I would not have estimated this anywhere near the $1100. Nor would I have expected it to come anywhere near that number. Did it actually sell for $1100, I can't tell from the Ebay listing. I certainly would not have graded it much above 8.0, given the amount of pitting on the surface.

These are close-ups of the fissures. I'm pretty sure these are pictured in Chervenka's book. You can see evidence of these on the image in the first posting if you look at the right and left edges of the marble. It's beneficial that the Ebay seller posted such high resolution images of the marble. There was a CA Sulphide on Ebay earlier in the week, but the pictures were not as good.

CA Sulphide. I'll dig out the article from back then discusses it and post it. I may also have a copy of Mark Chervenka's analysis laying around somewhere.

I didn't base my opinion about the Lady Godiva on what Baumann said. A friend of mine who is a collector bought a group of "California Sulphides" back in the 1992-1993 time frame. There were two Lady Godivas in the group. It hasn't been seen as a figure, except in a "California Sulphide", before or after.

Aqua is a known color from that time period. If you look closely at the image of this one you can see the fissured surface.

Polishing won't remove sun-tinting, it goes through the marble. There was a contemporary maker who was taking old sulphides and was doing casing them in a colored layer. The Lady Godiva is a known California Sulphide figure.

I think they are called Lipstick because it looks like lips with red lipstick pressed the marble not that they fit in a lipstick case. I first heard the name about 20 years or so ago, it was written on a poly bag containing one that a consignor had sent to me.

I've seen them referred to as Lipstick Rainbos

In 1996 I ran Absentee Marble Auctions 21, 22 and 23, each over 500 lots. I have print copies of the catalogues for 21 and 23, but not 22. I'm pretty sure that 22 was the live auction I held in Kansas City. I know we ran out of catalogues for that one. I think there is a copy of the catalogue in the MCSA archives, I'll check the next time I'm over there. I don't have any images from that early in digital form, at that point we were still shooting film and I was doing actual paste-up of the pages. The catalogue would have been in Wordperfect, but I had a hard disk crash in 1998 and lost everything prior to that date because the backup was corrupted.

I've handled several Dutch games over the years that have had Wire Pulls in them. I'll see if I can find a couple of images in my archives.

I have a soap shaped like a little girl and she is holding a marble under her arm. I'll dig out and take an image of it.

MarbleCollecting.com will be going dark for 5 minutes at 930AM EST in respect of the victims of the Newtown shooting. See http://www.webmomentofsilence.org/ for more details.

In the December issue of The MarbleCollecting.com Newsletter, I wrote an article about Marble Tower Games. Here's an example of one: Here's a PDF file of the article Antique Marble Tower Games.pdf And the link to the entire newsletter: http://eepurl.com/sQ1c1

Drat! I thought I was finally going to be able to say that Leroy's lost his marbles :-)

Also, the Northeast Meet on October 12 & 13 in Marlborough MA

Northboro MA

Got my Parrots yesterday. Superb!!! Thanks. Bob

From the Connecticut Parent Teacher Association website: Connecticut PTSA is deeply saddened by the tragedy that has struck our Newtown community. We have met with the PTA and community leaders in Newtown and Sandy Hook Elementary to offer our assistance at this very difficult time. They have asked us to spearhead the following efforts on their behalf: Snowflakes for Sandy Hook Please help the students of Sandy Hook have a winter wonderland at their new school! Get Creative!! No two snowflakes are alike. Make and send snowflakes to Connecticut PTSA, 60 Connolly Parkway, Building 12, Suite 103, Hamden, CT 06514, by January 12, 2013.

Send me an email and I'll look over the weekend.

This one would have been reported by me, since I was the one who was giving marble pricing and examples to Kovel. I'll fire up the old computer over the next day or so and see if I have to one in a database (and the image). Otherwise, I'll have to dig out the box of old catalogues and find it.

It's from one of my auctions. I can dig out an auction and lot number if you need it.

I would highly recommend using online postage, like stamps.com. I've been using it for a couple of years and the only time I go to the PO is to drop off the bin with the stamped packages in it. Walk in, drop it off, walk out. It's great.

School is cancelled until after the Christmas break. The last word was that they will be attending at a school in the next town over. I think there is a good chance they will never re-open the Sandy Hook school. On a sadder note, we found out this morning that one of the little girls who was murdered was also a student at one of the riding academies where my wife is the hoof trimmer.

The sheer magnitude of the loss is beyond comprehension. But to fully understand how disturbing this is, you have to know what Newtown is like. If you were to look in the dictionary under the word bucolic, there would be a picture of Newtown. Newtown would be the last place on earth that you would expect something like this to happen. It just completely shatters your worldview. Here's the Newtown Meeting House. This is where my wife and I were married. Newtown is known for having a huge flagpole in the middle of Main Street (the main route between Bridgeport and Danbury). You have to drive around it when you're driving up or down Rt. 25 The Newtown Ram Pasture. This gives you an idea of beautiful this place really is The home of the Newtown Bee's Antiques and the Arts Weekly. One of the largest weekly antiques newspapers in the world.