Steph

I got some marble mail too ... and one of them looked kinda corky. (A peewee bumblebee jorkscrew. )

Glad to hear it.

I'd guess after the 1950's. Peltier's conventional clear-based banana cat's eyes were introduced in the 1950's.

Thanks for helping me fill in the gaps. Did I mention that when I started the threads they were just gonna be for spare pictures which didn't fit in other threads? That made them sort of a strange hodgepodge. New folks passing through have probably hoped they'd be more comprehensive. And now they're getting there.

Quite Superior, no?

For reference and more examples here are the New Old Fashioneds which Josh posted in that thread.

And thank you again.

Just curious ... how do the purple marbles fit with the letter C? Oh, are they Chrissies? What about the pinkish one?

Coolness. I guessed glow on the left one. I didn't guess it on the blue. and the purple is pretty neat too (:

So one big question I have is how much glass would someone at Peltier have had to prepare to make even one banana cat eye. Did they have a small crucible for small batches of test marbles? Or would they have had to melt a whole lot of amber glass to be able to make any bananas at all? How small could a Peltier experimental batch realistically be?

Here are the marbles I'm usually talking about when I say WV swirl: Alley Agate Cairo Novelty Co. Champion Agate Davis Marble Co. Heaton Agate Co. Jackson Marble Co. Playrite Marble and Novelty Co. Ravenswood Glass and Novelty Co. Marble King and Mid-Atlantic could be added. And Alox complicates matters. I should also have suggested that Akro could possibly be added. I'd guess Akro made more swirls than Marble King did.

Well done. I do love your passion and focus! Admirable! Tell us more about the base on the left one ....

LOL ... smooth operator

Here's a mysterious marble. Such a pretty one yet so few are known. Joe McDonough discovered them in about 1989, in an auction for the family of a man who was said to work for Peltier before he moved to New Jersey. A total of 119 of the amber ones came with jars full of other colored bananas and colored clearies. Most of the ambers were mint. Some had a substance like melted rubber on them. There was one peewee in the lot. There seems no doubt that they are Peltier. Many notables including Alan Basinet weighed in when Joe was trying to confirm. I just marvel that there are so few when it's such a wonderful marble. How many might they have made? Where could they be hiding? This one is mine. :) And then here are some more. Joe's friend took this first picture and then the attached pics are earlier photos of the find. On Kodak paper.

July 1914 Butler Bros. From a 1972 publication compiled by Collector's Weekly: A Selection of Toys, Novelties and Postcards of 1914 Here's a little bigger version. I have a much bigger version if anyone wants it but it was over two meg by the time I converted it from pdf and rotated it. I need a more efficient image saver. (:

blast from the past

I prefer using small boxes. If you are willing to invest a little up front in things like boxes and bubble wrap, you could try Uline.com. (They have a minimum purchase, last I checked, but you can get a nice combination of items in that miniumum purchase.) You could also try a site such as Staples.com for smaller purchases. Some people use bubble-lined envelopes. Some people use the smallest flatrate box from the postal service. That commits you to a pretty big postal charge for a single marble -- nearly $6. But that price includes $50 insurance, so that's a good thing. For small numbers of marbles in excellent condition, I use 2"x2" ziplock baggies to make sure condition stays the same as I described it. If it's a near-mint condition group, I just wrap them snuggly in larger ziplock backs and bubble wrap cushion. Hope there's a useful idea in there somewhere.

Tough one. First impression on colors and striations of color was Master. But the structure is more like Akro, or possibly Marble King. I'm leaning Akro on this one, but I am not committed to that.

The colors definitely did not come through as brown and black on the monitor. The structure doesn't look like a Pelt to me. So I'll say no to Chocolate Cow even if I had a clearer handle on the colors. To me the structure looks like a Vacor -- modern marble from Mexico.

Nifty. I'm liking these more and more and more. I can almost see myself making one. And then I see some of the trickier pieces -- like the one which rotated a little each time and routed the marbles in different ways -- and the thought about how much thought it takes to come up with something like that is sort of intimidating. But the modularity has a very nice feel to it.

I used to play hooky from school to go buy apples and eat them in the park while I read novels. But for pie filling I can't make up my mind.

lol. yes, that's simple mathematics.

I think that could be so, but I wish it weren't so. It's like with marble tournaments. Not that many collectors are interested in the actual game of marbles. Yet where would marble collectors be if there weren't so many players who went before? I'm excited for anything which keeps people playing with the little orbs. Plus the more I look at the marble runs the more I like 'em.

They got more fragile later, didn't they. Love vaseline no matter what.

feeling cheeky