BobBlock

That's really sad. I saw this box (or an identical one) in Amana about 8 years ago.

I've seen #2 in as full lines of 10 in Christensen Agate boxes. There's no question in my mind that the marble is Christensen Agate. Regarding #3, I've seen similar marbles as lines of 10 in Christensen Agate boxes. If this particular one is not a Christensen, there is a Christensen that is almost identical to this one. The only thing that keeps me from saying it's a CAC is the slight translucence in the white (you can see some of the red under it). It's hard to say from an image, you'd really need to look at it in hand. #4 is definitely not Christensen. They never used these colors. Bob

I have several of these. The missing piece of metal either has a slit in it and the entire thing is used as a bookmark, or it is flat and used as a letter opener. There are some Victorian paper creasers as well that are flat, but this handle here looks to small to accept one. The buttonhooks have a a piece which has a cross-section that is round. The pictured item here takes a flat piece of metal. It is probably English and from the very early 1900s, older ones tend to be silver, brass or silverplate. Hansel has a bunch as well. There are a bunch of images of these in the book on Victorian Agate Collectibles I am just finishing up, but it won't be published for about a year. Here's an image I have laying around of 3 of them.

Hey folks, I'm finishing up some research and I couldn't answer the following questions from Dean Six's book, the marble society library or my own research. When you lay it all out, the following gaps appear: 1. The year that Alley sold to Corning the machine that Davis later bought? 2. What happened to the Christensen Agate machines? 3. The year that the Ravenswood machine was sold to Bogard? 4. The year that the Ravenswood machine was sold to Champion? 5. The year the 3/8" machine was traded by Bogard to Marble King? And what he got in return? 6. What happened to the Jackson, Davis or Playrite machines? 7. What happened to the Master Glass machinery? 8. Are the Champion machines still onsite? 9. What happened to the Mid-Atlantic machinery?

The three dots means it was produced in 2003. Two dots is 2002, four dots is 2004. I'm not sure if he produced after that.

I was using a Thumler's Tumbler in the spring, but the barrels would not seal properly and the belts kept breaking. I got rid of it and bought a Lortone. It is the one with the two 1.5-lb barrels. This way you can use one barrel for the two rough tumbles and the other for the pre-polish and polish. I picked up the tumbler, and grits for about 8 loads, for less than $150 off of one of the rock tumbling sites.

I was shocked by the news that Les had passed away. Les was one of my favorite people in the marble collecting world. I have so many memories of Les and stories about him (as do many who knew him), that I can't even begin to record them all here. My first memory of Les is from the Columbus show in 1990. He stopped at my table and we started chatting. He said he had lost his entire marble collection in a fire and was starting to build it up again. It's amazing what he accomplished in the following 15 years. The last time I spent significant time with Les was during the Clum auction last September. He was having a great time bidding during the auction and was really happy about some of the buys he got. Although, I think he had more fun selling marbles out of the back of his truck before and after the auction each day! I'll never forget the poker game we had in his hotel room the night between the two auction days. Those intervening years have seen a lot of marbles change hands between the two of us. I bought a lot from Les, sold him a lot, and he has been a consignor in my auctions for a long, long time. It was always a treat coming to a show and stepping into his room, because you always knew you were going to see some great marbles, and get a fair deal from Les. And he could find marbles "out in the wild" like you wouldn't believe. Someone once told me that there wasn't a marble for sale within 500 miles of Les that he didn't know about. The one marble that I bought from Les that I will treasure the most (and the one that shows the kind of person Les was) was a Christensen Agate handgathered that I bought from him at the Amana 2004 show. I had pulled a bunch of marbles for him to give me a price and the CAC was in with them. He picked it up and said "I've had that marble in that case for a couple of shows now and no one has even looked at it. You know what that is, right." I said, "Yeh, its one of those Christensen handgathereds. I'm going to put it in my collection". He said, "No one else even looked at it, you can have it for 5 bucks". Needless to say I'll never part with that one :-) It broke my heart when I heard the news about Les a couple of days ago. The marble collecting world has a lost a collector and dealer of enormous stature. The shows will never be the same without him there. Sarah and my deepest sympathies go out to Sue, Krystal, Carianne, Abby and the rest of his family. Les will be sorely missed!