Steph

You pretty much nailed my thought process on that, Joe.

Vitro Tiger Eye Fun find. Remnants of a 1950's marble game, maybe.

I will see if I can find something .... but it could be a bit .... am headed out to a picnic. Maybe someone else can find pictures in their records before I am able to.

I'm not sure it can be found. If it is the one I am thinking of it was so radioactive that we had to send it to Chernobyl.

I gotta remember to put this thread in the archives someday when it winds down. keeperthread

It is possible that MFC created it. The one that I thought might have been different -- I think that one may have been from Europe. So maybe there was a 20th century American standard and maybe a different one for Europe in the 19th or early 20th century. This is just a fuzzy half-memory so pretend I didn't say anything about that.

M.F. Christensen went from size 0 to size 10. I'm not currently seeing confirmation about what that meant in inches. From an MFC booklet.

This is from a Master flyer.

Here's the box!

They do represent measurements. I think most companies used those measurements. But for some reason I have been under the impression that one company didn't -- maybe an older company before the measurements were standardized. This is from an Akro salesman case: 000 is 1/2" 00 is 1/6" 0 is 5/8" And I just figured out how to remember the rest 1 is 11/16", 2 is 12/16", 4 is 14/16", up to 6 which is 16/16".

I don't think I have any rusty marbles!

I don't have a guess for that big 'un, but it sure is a screamer. I spent hours sorting out UV marbles. I'd take the brightest ones out. Then my eyes would readjust and I'd see a new group of glowers. So I'd take them out. Then with those gone some others would stand out. And so on. I got down to a level where the glow was rather subtle, but I was also getting a lot of colors. I had a popeye with four colors of glow.

Not me.

I think Akro corks on left and right. On the middle my first thought was Alley. But I would look at it really closely to see if it could possibly have a Pelt structure behind all that swirliness.

Cool. I can't argue with any of them. Probably all handgathered. If any turn out not to be, I think you'll figure out on your own that it's out of place since you seem to have a pretty good feel for them. The bottom middle could be an example of a handgathered Akro. A cleaner tighter 9 generally points to MFC. A somewhat sloppier 9 can point toward Akro.

I'd have them all in with the Vitros. Akro and Marble King both made marbles which could be confused with Vitro All-Reds, but gonna assume Vitro here.

Generally would be identified as M.F. Christensen, rather than just Christensen. M.F. Christensen came first, then Christensen Agate. Not related except I that that the 2nd company picked the name because it was a famous marble name. M.F. Christensen is best known for their handgathered slags with the 9 and tails. On the other hand, Christensen Agate did have some handgathered marbles, presumably including slags. Akro also had handgathered slags. Peltier did too. Not sure who would know how to sort through all of them. Long story short: Good chance of MFC on many handgathered slags. Some possibility of other makers. I would start a "handgathered slag" section and show them off without worrying too much about if they are all MFC. NOW ... to your specific marbles. Top row all look handgathered. One the middle row, I'd like to turn over the left one and middle one to see if we really have 9 and tail action there. On the bottom row, I'd like to see more of the tail on the middle one. Finally ... on the bottom right ... I'd like to see more of that one for a different reason -- to see if it could be a cork or a transitional.

My first thought was Jabo but I don't have any good reason to back that up with such a busy marble at such a small size. If a WV swirl, I obviously have no guess for which WV company. With that shade and texture of green, I kinda like Al's idea of twisted rainbo. If I had it in hand, I'd be trying hard to see if it's one ribbon spooling around or if it's several distinct ribbons like a rainbo would have.

Does some of the color go from seam 1 to seam 2 .... and some go from seam 1 back to seam 1? That's what the pictures are looking like to me at the moment ... and that is very strange.

very interesting