Ally Opp

I feel like I've been blown out of the water, Alan!! Avast that cannon fire with your Akros! Seriously, do you have any Cardinal Reds amongst that last over-powering onslaught? I've got some tiny ones, just over the 1/2" mark that were dug, but don't really know them to be the Cardinals. Take a look!

A trio of 1 3/16" Moonies. Notice the nice fire glow cast on the cloth surface.

Are you using a rounded tip drill bit for these? And do you use a drill press? I've often wondered about doing something like you did, but with only a drill motor I worry that it would make a wobbly hole. That is a great way to use up all those scrap pieces of wood we all seem to have lying around.

Very cool stuff! I do have a question: does the shattering happen under the torch or in the annealing oven? Or both?

Gad, I wish that my bank account was flush........I do believe I would just have to own both these lots.

Uh....um......well.....I'm just a newbie, and my head hurts. I'll jump in later.

Thanks Steph, for starting this thread! And thanks to those who have posted. It seems pretty obvious to me know why they are called Wedding Cakes. I think I have an ugly one with a brown frosting line, plus it has a big chip out of it. But it's the only one I have, so it all makes sense to me now. One question: do these wedding cakes have seam(s) or are they a swirl?

Nice picking! Please, which marble is the Paul Bunyan?

How in God's name have you been able to restrain yourself from opening up that rainbow box? You must have brass marbles!

Remember....brushing is not enough. You have to also floss!

I have a 3/4" Akro oxblood and light brown patch. I've not seen too many others, but I don't think the marble is rare, but it is possibly the rarest marble in my small collection. It is in collectible condition with lots of wear and bites.

It's the weekend back to marbles.Have you ever tried to photograph yellow aventurine?Not easy but I'll get it.Any suggestions about how to get better pics of aventurine.Yea I need a better camera hmmmmm.... Natural sunshine is the only way I can really see adventurine, especially if it is subtle. I've tried taking photos outdoors to try and capture the effect, but my Canon Powershot is limited. I have a handful of cats with green veins drenched in light green adventurine and cannot get a decent photo. But they look good outdoors on the full sunny day!

Beautiful CAC's! I understand the cobra and cyclone (kinda), but that middle marlbe looks like it has Guinea colors patterns. I do see a kind of swirling in it. I'm trying to stay in the boat, but am probably just hanging on by the gunwales! A simple yes it is a cyclone/cobra will do. Avast that hijacking notion, you swab! I'm trying to steer a straight course.

Bill, those Alley p's are very colorful and nice! Did you acquire them in a bunch or were they periodic finds here and there? I've been looking at original mesh bag marbles of various types, and pee wees don't seem to be mixed in. I guess they were sold as is and wouldn't be included in bags or boxes? I'm just wondering because they really do seem to be hard to come by.

If all else fails, you can set the camera back to its original factory settings. I assume that camera came with softward and an imaging/editing program? I have an older Canon Powershot that works pretty good, but once in awhile it goes out of whack and I have to drag out the manual. Good luck!

Nice pee wees Marblemiser and triker! David, I have a Bennington brown pee wee that is so ugly that I cannot see anyone wanting to use it. By that I mean the little round touch marks where they contacted each other during the glazing process has protroding knobs that would make in impossible to roll and uncomfortable to use as a game marble. I didn't include it because it is just an ugly betty. But I won't toss it!

Gosh, Pee wees seem to me the hardest size to come across. This small butter plate (dug) is the sum of all my pee wees. Akro seems to be the most represented. I recently got the purple flintie in the wild in Nevada. The Moonies were supposedly all dug marbles, and the two with the oxblood also. I beleive there is a Acme Reeler in there, as well as a couple of Champs. I have no idea about the cats eye. One Marble King, and then a transparent colored swirl that I have no idea, but it has some intense colors when backlit. So....is it me, or are pee wees just a wee bit harder to find?

You know, David, you would make a natural Ronin. Really. Once a highly respected Master, but now an outcast forever blogging from forum to forum, looking for....whatever it is you are looking for. Just don't commit the "soupyka", you know, using a dull butter knife to spill your innards. Can I be your second? I would be honored. You do know I am kidding. Snatch the marble from my hand, Grasshopper and all that stuff...

There are 3 panels that hang on the front porch entry way. I am pretty sure they are original to the house. There is another larger rectangle window above the door that has the same motiff. The first picture is what you would want to see if you were looking at it. The back side does not have the sparkle like the front side. I'm not sure how they accomplished this, but I am fairly sure it was done on purpose. Looking at all the pieces that were used, it is easy to see how the glass maker distrubuted the copper (?) particles onto the back of the glass pane before it was rolled. I've been working with old glass for 20 plus years and this is the first I have seen of this effect. I believe that the Peacock Tearoom panels the LC Tiffany did had a lot of glass with different types of, well, adventurine for want of a better word. His recipes went to the grave with him and no one has ever made glass quite the same. These panels ARE NOT Tiffany, but there is a good chance that this green glass came from his glass factory. This is just an educated guess on my part, and I'd mortage the house to be able to purchase glass like this.

Check out the load of adventurine that was used in this antique green glass. I repaired 3 panels for some homeowners in my town. The house is probably circa 1890's thru 1910. I've never seen rolled glass with this much adventurine in it. I would love to have a few sheets of the stuff!

How about lizards with wings?

whew! now I can breath--I'm not the only one who uses stainless steel calipers!

Thank you for this great thread Alan! I do have a question though. What about the 30 marble count blue jobber boxes that contain early Ravenswood marbles? Were they made in large enough batchs to have a clear idea how to place them or id them? Now that I have a box, and a few have the metalic swirling, plus the very out of roundness of almost all of them, I think it would be easier for me to pick them out. But.....how many of these marbles were made and how available are they besides in the jobber boxes?

Basic human instincts are at play here, and thank God for that! We (all of us) will never completely agree on anyone else's observations, accusations, opinions or statements. So what? Again, thank God for that! What I do is read it all, see if it affects me personally, (which could be a crap shot of emotions or actions) and decide how I feel about it. Most of the time, I let bygones be bygones. Does everyone here really want to think exactly like everyone here? Heck no! Nothing will be learned. Apathy will eventually reign, and there goes any reason for even collecting anything! At the end of the day, none of this affects the world, or for that matter, my life. But I do learn! I could hope that it would be a more user friendly format, but we are just humans..top of the food chain predators with big brains. That big brain allows us to appreciate beauty, and we all interpret it differently. Glass makes beautiful marbles....old marbles used beautiful glass. Glass still makes beautiful marbles...but old marbles have provenance, history, memories, value, intrinsic beauty...why else would we torture ourselves in trying to acquire them and defend them so aggressively? CAC's made some of the best marbles. Jabo MAKES some of the best marbles. It all is how you look at it and how you perceive any effect to your collection or ability to collect with the same amount of pleasure you did 10 years ago. Some collectors instinctively perceive new marbles that are starting to look like old marbles as a threat...it is instinctive to react. It's biological. Some collectors instinctively perceive new marbles as the wave of the future and instinctively react. Once again, it's biological. Will this observation change how the issues are discussed on these boards? No. Humans have been haggling for thousands of years. It ain't gonna ever stop. What we can do is accept the fact that others will protect their views and beliefs just as vocally as the next person. There's nothing wrong with it, and even if there were, what are we going to do about it? That remains to be seen, because the answers are at our fingertips, and we all know what happens with a keyboard as an extension of our voices. I would bet that if most of our most vocal collectors were to meet each other face to face, they would try everything in there perspective powers to not embarass or insult each other. Who wants to get a fat lip over a marble? I think most members have figured this out---the keyboard makes a great shield and emboldens us. Some members have figured out that it is poor form to continue to use the keyboard as a shield. Some have never used it as a weapon, some take to it without a problem. Just think on this: the chances are good that someday, each of us has the chance to personally run into one another, either by chance or design. What are we going to do, when at the next marble show, you see someone you have traded barbs with on these boards? Hide? Ignore them? Confront them? Doesn't sound like an ideal situation. And what about the marbles? Don't you see....it's all about the marbles! We all collect marbles! Each of us knows a little bit more than the other about some aspect of collecting marbles. I am a newbie who wants to learn, but when the topics get toxic, then I get anxious and go somewhere else. I like marbles. I don't like arguments or intolerence or ignorence. No one learns anything of value. Marbles are like circles. Circles meet each other. Arguments are like lines. Lines are ridgid, un-bending, heading in opposite directions. I like to think like a marble.

With the prices that were suggested by David on that comtemp marble.....I'd be leary of someone else trying to fake one of Josh's marbles. One thing I have learned from this site is that the "gut" feelings that are offered by the advanced collectors are just about right on.