david Chamberlain

Sheet! I'd put a Superman price on that. Maybe if you put "Superman m!b$" in the Search/Advanced thingie at the upper right of the screen on the Main Board Marble Connection it will narrow down the hunt. I don't know but it must be good for something. David

Speaking about marble calendars, I'm still sending admissions to certain publishing houses for a calendar strictly on Cat's-Eye marbles. If anyone is interested in mint(Freeze-Wrapped!) copies of Marilyn Barrett's 2001 and 2002 marble calendars I have extra copies. David

I got something like 90 marbles....maybe more from this run and I can attest to the fact that they are choice. At least as nice in hand as they are pictured. Hey! I don't do carpet bowls but if you saw Bauman's latest book you'd give it a second thought. David

Some of these are so pathetically obviously contrived. Maybe the marble won't go anywhere; it really doesn't have much to commend it. I tried to find a place at this eBay Auction where you could contact the seller but couldn't figure it out. Wound up at some site that was asking me if I wanted to configure my 'something.' And then when I put in my in my User Name in parenthesis after it it said (Not you?). What's up with that? I mean like it came up immediately. Does this woman have my number as a trouble maker? DAVID

That's good enough for me.....David

I for one hail you as the Marble Poet Laureate. David

My goodness! That was darn depressing but quite enlightening. David

Alley or Akro? David

I was thinking about watching the ALIEN movies again but after seeing this I've got the Heebee Jeebees! Packaging as other worldly. David

I'm not sure I could ascribe fully to the archeologist's affectionate attachment to certain damaged marbles but I sure as heck like BigJohn's marble with the crater. That's big enough to dive into. Of course 'as made' requires a measure of value adjustment; I sure as heck don't want to go to extremes with my "mint with an as made" comments previously. And while I've prided myself on primarily handling mint example machine mades I've never gone higher than 9.5 in my estimations and in fact prefer not to use the decimal system at all in grading. Most of my sales are by mail and I prefer to stick to "Full Return Privilege" for whatever reason. David

Hey Man! I'm on the job.....David

Damage is damage. As made flaws are not damage. A mint designation should exclude factory flaws but it wouldn't hurt to provide them in your description as this person does. Finally, life is so much more pleasant if you view marbles with nothing higher than a 10x. David

I swear on some marbles I'm just willing to split the difference and let it go at that! I've got 20+ years into this and you can put that bag on my head anytime! David

Aside from the blurriness that's a pretty respectable marble whatever it is. As for a 'hybrid' designation I think I'd initially stick with the name that had the predominance of colors particular to its status and then affix hybrid if variations occur. How's that for being slippery? David

I'm not sure about this. I would think that everything else being equal you could righteously call it a Superman. Then depending on the degree of orange tinting of the 'other' red ribbons a person considering the marble would make qualified judgements. As long as you've got three solid areas of the basic Superman colors I'd call it a Go but a qualified one if after those basics it tends to diminish elsewhere. I'm not etching these statements in glass! Maybe what you'd have is a Hybrid Superman rather than a Superboy. These are murky waters. David

I don't know how I overlooked this or didn't have someone tell me about Paul. I can't tell you the number of times I hooked up with Paul at the Rawley, MA Sunday morning flea market. He always had something I wanted and occasionally he bought from me. He always seemed perfectly content with his own marble milieu. The concept of a 'secret find' was so true. His wife was a sweetheart. I don't think I needed to discover this today but I'm glad I finally did. Paul deserves a special place in our memories. David Chamberlain

Oh my Gawd! I just caught on too. Colder than a...... Great! David

Hi Marie, The marble board is MARVELOUS MIBS(With a 'v'). I'm sure you will get an answer over there if not here. I got the impression that she was taking a sabbatical from the board but that could have been someone else. I really have not posted at Marvelous Mibs for at least half a year; maybe longer. David

It is additionally galling when the seller is from West Virginia. You'd kind of wished that some of them WV marble smarts would have rubbed off on the seller. If this is their opening salvo Gawd help us for what's coming. Gotta agree though, that's an "unusual Guinea." David

There is activity afoot by numerous marble people to provide better individual marble company photographs. Jabo, Alox and Cairo forsure. I doubt though that anyone in their right mind will trust to Schiffer to treat them decently re. photographs and/or text. Maybe Collector Books is the next route to take for a marble book. Self-publishing can be disappointing at times. David

Re. the enquire about the text(Popular American Marbles).....I'm afraid that the information is scant. Re. the comment about the first book and it's photographs and assuming this refers to AMMM unfortunately Schiffer reduced many photographs to chapter heading insets thereby making them useless for serious IDing. Schiffer would probably tell you that this was done to accomodate more text but in conversations with the authors they were appalled at the extent of text deletions. Still, this is a great book . David

Unfortunately Schiffer in the magnanimousness of their wisdom and with supposedly new state-of-the-art photographic equipment provided page-after-page-after page of worthless marble photographs. The three authors associated with this book considered it a crime and pretty much disown the book. I wrote to Peter Schiffer about the book and he was completely oblivious, interested more in casting aspersions on my marble judgement. David Chamberlain

I have never seen it! David

I suspect rarer than the pearlized whitie. David

I sent him a kindly note via eBay keeping in mind that the marbles were laden with sentimentality but providing the straight skinny on what he was attempting to sell. Not a word in response! Maybe it was because I asked if he was planning to deliver the marbles personally! David