Steph

If you want to highlight more pictures, copy and paste the whole URL. Please. Took a long time to figure out which ones had those numbers on the end of their address.

#3? Do you mean the third from the right? Ooops ... when I described marbles as #2 and #3 above, I was counting from the left. Well, on #3 from the right, I see why you would think of the "9" which is often described as desirable. However, the 9's of the the M. F. Christensen company, for example, come from the marble being hand-gathered and clipped in a way which created a tail which circled around the marble. All the marbles in this photo are machine-made. No hand-gathering stage. So the little swirl is coincidental. These are "cold rolls". Errors. From the glass cooling off to quickly for the marble to be completely rounded on the rollers. The creases are "seams" or "cutlines", not "pontils". The term "pontil" is generally reserved for a marble which is hand-made or at least hand-gathered. Sometimes the seams are more pronounced. Some marbles smooth out more on the rollers than others. These are machine-made. With the solid colors they're considered game marbles, and have been made by many many companies for many many years. If that is a pearlized finish I'm seeing on them, that just means they were made recently. No reproduction. Just something modern marble makers do to catch our eyes. I don't know what the method is for putting that finish on.

I'm not aware of an Australian company which manufactured toy marbles. (I'm pretty sure there were marble machines in Australia, but I think they were used for industrial purposes -- like for the marbles which sometimes were used as bottle stoppers.) Cat's eyes are generally first ID-ed as U.S. or not U.S. Some of the Asian ones with six or more vanes are collectible ... if the vanes have a particular uncommon pattern.

Yeah ... I know I'm duplicating your searches. I think maybe the last time I saw the game, I just saw game pieces and maybe we didn't know the name of the game. So, anyway, it's good to see a name.

http://www.leeds.gov.uk/museumsandgalleries/pages/object.aspx?oid=72465

I don't know how to translate these pictures, but it is kids playing .... http://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/news/12920756.Playing_detective_to_remember_lost_games/

I have heard of that before. Maybe only once before. That makes me hopeful though that someone else might be able to help.

Yay! LOL ... seriously .... that's comforting. Since I don't love misnaming marbles but I kept calling them Vacors.

These look like Vacors, made after 2000. Vacor is a company in Mexico. (The company has a new name now -- Fabricas Selectas -- but Vacor is easier to remember.) The style name was Spaghetti. Vacor Spaghettis -- nice name, eh?

This style is a "cat eye". Are you familiar with that term?

As to value, they don't have substantial monetary value. So you have leeway in collecting them for sentimental reasons or giving them to children who would appreciate them. In years to come they could become more collectable. But mostly these are for standard enjoyment -- looking at or playing a game.

Well, they're almost all modern marbles. Might be one or two which could be id-ed as vintage. By modern we mean made in 1970 or later. Many were made since 2000. Basically it's a nice assortment of marbles made mostly outside the U.S. The first pic in the gallery looks American. Post-2000 Marble King Rainbos with an acid wash to make them frosty. As I said a nice assortment follows, including at least a couple I haven't seen before but which I have to assume are modern. It's always cool to see unusual ones from outside the U.S. The two which stood out to me as good chance of being vintage were #2 and #3 in this photo:

I'll go check those out now. Here's a link for anyone else who wants to join in: Sara's Gallery

Thank you, John! I love it all, even the parts that are over my head -- for now. Talk technical to me, baby!

It totally looked felt like it should be a Nova family member to me but I didn't want to say it. I looked up some pix thinking I would find it there but I didn't see that combo. Time to do some more looking and some more asking.

Ahhhhhhhh ...... What a lovely universe

I'll put in a preliminary vote for Peltier. Just a hunch.

Hello Sara, sorry for your loss. We'll try to help as well as we can. It might be easier to load them to the gallery than to the attachments if you don't know how to resize them.

psychepeeweedelic

I keep trying to have an epiphany based on cool rate of the interior and amount of surface area. But nothing happens when you try to force an epiphany.

Peltier Multicolor Rainbo. Probably from the NLR era -- i.e., early 1930's.

Yes! I have so wanted to see a box with that name! (And thank you, John, as always for the beautiful bump.)

And though she be but little, she is fierce. ― William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream Will is okay with it. So I'm okay with it.

What is wrong with "though"? Seriously. Not just taunting the curmudgeon.