Steph

Duplicates would be welcome anyway. Nice to revisit the favorites.

A little Leonard Cohen

Hiya. My votes are Jabo Classic for the first two and Vacor for the third. (The frosted look says "Vacor" to me ... either Vacor or a marble which has spent some time in an aquarium.)

Oh no! Heart sinking for his family and friends and the marble world.

Pretty sure, yes.

Bump just because it's so pretty.

Even for money, it seems such an unlikely combination of people and professions.

fun!

I wonder if the two words after the 59 are also part of the phone number .... like how people here used to start phone numbers with words like "Murray Hill". Anyone feel like reaching out to a professor of Japanese culture at a university?

Hamburger flavored before cooking with copious amounts of Teriyaki sauce, ginger and onion flakes, plus not so copious amounts of crushed red pepper. Yum.

We still need to contact someone with knowledge of Japanese cultural history to find out when they used two-digit phone numbers.

The graphics changed between the transitional box and the cat's eye box. And the label stuck to the box instead of being part of the box _might_ indicate a change in how packaging was done -- maybe something more expensive to something more generic. But if this second thought is a stretch, we still have a modernization -- and Westernization -- of the logo to account for.

:thup:

Yes, they definitely had machine-made marbles in 1926. Slags, Cornelians and Imperials. And they had Flinties and Moonies in 1929. I just don't see room for the patches -- or for Spiral style corks -- between this advertisement from 1929 and the "beautiful new line of marbles" Akro introduced for children to name in 1930, AKA the Prize Names. I don't recognize two of the patch/ribbon patterns in the machine as ever coming from Akro. One of the patch patterns does look like it could have come from Akro but, again, in a later year.

Mondo kewl!

Darn, this is still not in color: https://books.google.com/books?id=ScvNAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA765 https://books.google.com/books?id=9hMTAAAAYAAJ&pg=RA1-PA43#v=onepage&q=aluminoid&f=false

It's not often that we can see a date for a Japanese Cat's Eye bag ... but here's one.

Could be. However, the patches and ribbons still don't fit American manufacturers from that time as far as I know. That's my main point. It's earlier than I thought of for Japanese patches, but Japanese patches are still somewhat mysterious, while dates on American marbles are fairly well pinned down ... or so I thought.

Did some checking. In 1955, news articles about the failing marble industry said that Japan could ship marbles for $10 a ton by labeling them as ballast. Also worker's wages and taxes were said to be considerably lower in Japan. Shorter of two articles I found: http://s119.photobucket.com/user/modularforms/media/History/1955_01_24_MarblesFromJapan_Vitro_c.jpg.html So that doesn't necessarily tell me about 1929, but my working theory is that the situation was similar.

I haven't broken down prices yet. I have a pretty good feel for the marbles made in the U.S. in 1929. Or I thought I did. But either I don't have as good of an idea as I thought. Or those marbles are foreign. Those seem to be the two choices. I did think about the possibility of them being scrap, but how much scrap would they have to have to decide to take out an ad promising marbles for vending machines? Time for me to do some more digging.

Thank you kindly. I feel so much better than two months ago. I think I slept on it wrong last night. The elbow hurts a little again. But it feels like ten steps forward and only one step back.

heh ... thanks

They don't look like Akro corks to me. Akro DID supply marbles for vending machines. However, those pictured in the overlaid photo from 1930 don't look like the Akros I recognize from that time. The way a 1931 Akro ad is phrased, it makes me wonder if it's selling surplus Akro slags: http://aa.arcade-museum.com/Automatic-Age-1931-03/Automatic-Age-1931-03-110.pdf