Steph

Saw some attributed to (or guessed as) Alley, which reminded me that wasn't the first time I saw them attributed to Alley, and I don't know enough about any of them. And in another conversation, about Akro Imperials being thought to be silver oxbloods, I did think of your Hy-Grade bag with the milky ones, and Hy-Grade bags in general, containing swirls ... and I wondered ... were all those swirls Akro .... or did Akro maybe buy some from Alley after all. Do you see differences between the ones you think of as Akro and the ones you think of as Alley?

Gotta wonder how patterns like that were achieved.

Will someone please tell me where I put my dug swirl sample sets? Thanks in advance.

Do we still have Akro milky oxbloods? Are they Alley now? Are some Akro and some Alley?

Definitely counted then. Sometimes it counts now.

That base glass says Asian. Well, the vanes do also!

Looking Vitro from here.

Yes! Or matching bigs and littles.

There's a cute saying I learned here. I wanted to say it yesterday but was afraid it would be taken wrong .... "You can tell a marble collector .... but you can't tell 'em much!"

Oh gosh, I'm behind on my reading. Heaton ear .... new to me .... I really gotta find where I put my swirl sample sets and see what kind of ears I have.

What a big question. Short answer for now: I usually expect more solid glass on an NLR.

In ads, Moss Agates were sometimes described as having "exquisite patterns". Would you say patches have exquisite patterns? Me neither.

This is a Moss Agate box:

Pelt Rainbos on top. I'll go Vitro on the bottom middle. Is the bottom right swirly or patchy? I can't make that out. More views would be good. Not sure what the bottom left could be ... the coloring and structure aren't clicking for me with any particular maker.

I like it. Do you?

If you look at the marbles that people are calling Ringers, usually they won't have a crystal clear base ... at least not entirely. They're gonna have some of the moss base inside, but they might have some amount of clear, because these moss corks had more going on than basic moss patches did. But they're still mosses.

This would be an Asian cat's eye ... with what appears to be accidental oxblood ... a byproduct of the coppery chemical used to make that shade of blue .

When Akro made that one, they called it a Moss Agate. Nowadays, many collectors are resistant to using "Moss Agate" for anything but patches. But Akro called them Moss Agates and was very proud of them. One of Akros most expensive marbles. Some of those resistant collectors will call yours a Ringer. But Akro didn't make marbles called Ringers. They had a box, with the Ringer name on it, but that's because of the game called Ringer.

Yeah, one of your Vitro hybrids. If you ever find one one with six ribbons, three of one color on one side and three of another color on the other, with sparkles in the ribbons in other colors than green ... let me know. Found those once ... and sold them ... and never seen any since.

1" brings us to Alley or Jabo, and I'm not feeling like committing at this time.

Right. 1990's or 2000's.

Yeah ... we were at 48 today ... raining all day ... gonna go back to 12 tonight ... with snow somewhere on the way down.

Guess that's a true "hybrid". Like from when the runs were switching over.