Steph

Here is David's classic article as quoted from Joemarbles.com: Root Beer Floats, Novas, and Pink Champagnes Peltier Marble Company By David Chamberlain I believe its time that some clarity was brought to bare on the actual origin of the above named marbles. Confusion reigns and it will only get worse in time. In 1989, the legendary West Coast Toy & Marble Dealer, Russell Coppel, commissioned eight different marbles through Peltier Marble Company of Ottawa, Illinois (Photo1). Exceedingly small quantities were manufactured approximately 7000 of each design and all were right around 7/8 to 15/16. It was Russells intention to sell them in boxed sets, but that never happened. Mostly they were box lot sales to antique dealers in California. The marbles gave Russell great trading strength because they were big and beautiful. If anything, Russell was and is the Master of Trades. PHOTO #1 Russell would be doing a cross-country trip visiting family in Minnesota, make a marble connection, and descend on Amana or the Columbus show with maybe two or three marbles but the right ones. They might not even be his marbles! He'd leave the show though with one of the bigger cash hauls plus many more marbles going than he had coming. Russell would also bring bulk marbles to Amana. It made no difference the pedigree; hed go bulk! My first visit to Amana in 1990 was with Russell and he had something like 125 sulphides. Late one evening we were out in the 2nd floor hallway bowling sulphides! Had to quit though because it became obvious wed eventually break someone’s ankle with all the coming and going in and out of the rooms. You think you have marble stories! Well, when it was obvious that the eight different marbles weren’t ever going to see being boxed-up into a cozy little group, I told Russell he should at least approach A&W with a promotional schtick for the Root Beer Floats (photo 2). Never happened! At least he named them proper and the Novas too, being exploding stars against the blackness of space (photo 3). I think I christened the Pink Champagnes (photo 4). PHOTO #2 PHOTO #3 PHOTO #4 The main confusion lies with the Novas because there were three black-based marbles with surface red & yellow but only one with an additional surface bruising of white. They are variously lumped together as all being Novas, whereas only one of them was. Marilyn Barrett highlighted the Novas in her 2002 marble calendar with an inset photo. In Photos 1 and 5a & b, the Nova is the one in the first position, a narrow ribboned and patched in the second, and the one with the odd swiggle in the third position. If you had a mixed bag of these three black-based varieties, you could easily pick out the three types. PHOTO #5a (top row, front) #5b (bottom row, reverse side): Little known outside of these named marbles and unfortunately so, are the two white-based marbles, one having two intense translucent blue ribbons with depth (photo 6), the other having orange patches beautifully edged in many cases with yellow (photo 7). PHOTO #6 PHOTO #7 Finally, there’s the lowly black-based with white smears and ribbons. Nearly every one of these experienced internal fracturing or more likely multiple surface annealing cracks. Tough! Sometimes they just don’t get it right! PHOTO #8 I credit Russell with encouraging me to consider marbles well before I leapt into the marble ring. For a while he drifted away from marbles but just this year he had evidenced a renewed interest, even asking me for a copy of Larry & Marlow’s cats-eye book and he has started collecting them. We have a mutual corrupting influence on each other as not too long ago Russell and Jeffry Grey (the maker of Fiber Agates fiberglass, not fiber optic marbles) got me into collecting SUPER BALLS. Now if that isn’t pathetic, I don’t know what is! I hope this has brought the light of day to this small group of marbles and a better understanding of some fine Peltier marbles from the not too distant past. David Chamberlain, 11-10-2005

Thanks, Tommy. By the way, who authored the link at AAM? Is it the classic David Chamberlain article? Or the information which Paula Cole (aka marblemover) compiled? Or something else? As with most topics, I have a lot of sources I could reassemble into something useful for me, but not in a ready-to-read format for anyone else.

Well, it wasn't working. Luckily my husband knows enough to recognize it didn't have a memory card. I didn't know what a memory card was, and didn't register what "memory stick SD card adaptor" in the ebay description could mean. It meant I still needed a card to go in that adaptor. Oops. But hubby had a spare and now I have one. So yay. But I need to rest and recuperate before I try to take marble pictures.

that's so pretty ...

I got one from ebay. Now to figure out how to use it.

Did you mean "both sites"? There aren't "sides". Most of us are friends on facebook. Leading members of that site post here. The owner of this site is a member in good standing over there. I'm just not. And you have to be a member to view the links. So I just don't get to see them. That's all.

It's so shiny my first thought was modern. But that could be an Akro Royal.

Aw, go have a look. The marble world used to have a lot of resources on it but it looks like Marble Connection's old Nova threads are missing and the other marble sites I knew of with the info have gone offline. If AAM is the official keeper of the Nova information now, so be it. Check it out.

Interesting looking ... Would like to see more views of the seams.

???? Maybe Jabo????

Maybe Vitro.

I think this is another Peltier Rainbo

Modern Asian:

This one is modern. Vacor, I think.

If vintage, then this one looks Vitro, but it might be modern. (You do have some moderns in this group of marbles.)

Possibly a Peltier Rainbo. (Edit: actually pretty sure it's a Peltier Rainbo.)

Bennington (a German ceramic marble)

I've had some mega rockhounds in my family. I don't even dabble. But I do love a pretty rock. The biggest rockhound in my family gave my husband a pretty sizeable amethyst geode with another crystal nested inside ... but I put all our cool rocks into some kitty litter buckets in preparation for a move. And the move didn't happen in a timely manner and the rocks stayed in the buckets. And then the buckets got used to hold down the back of a pick-up in the snow. And then someone stole the buckets from the back of the pick-up. We were very sad to lose that geode. This past year I decided I needed some more pretty rocks and so I bid on some online and now I have them in a candy dish. (with some goldstone and some stoneware marbles)

I'm banned at AAM and was looking forward to the fun of growing a Nova thread over here. Oh well. Sara, I hope that gives you the info you were looking for.

So SonyT200 is the unanimous choice! "Ottlite" is new to me. Simple is good!

Welcome! That's a lot of years of collecting. Bet you have some treasures.

Obviously gotta love a wet-looking CAC. But that Vitro is amazing!

My camera which is now in six pieces was a Canon PowerShot SX170 IS point-and-shoot. It was okay but the flash gave some distracting effects which made marbles less clean looking.

Time to get a new camera. Gives me an idea for a thread where you guys post your camera model and some representative marble photos. And if you have a special set up for your marble photos, maybe share that too?

Good observation about NW Montana! Muddies are keepers, by the way.