Steph

Wow!

I just remembered this one. This isn't a very clear 9, but it's a nice tail. My marble. Charles' pix.

What Mike said pretty much. In tournament play back in the day, shooters were not supposed to be above 3/4". Any marble a little bigger than average might have been called a shooter. You will see that in some Marble King bags. The label will say something like "a shooter in every bag" but you may have to look really hard to find the slightly larger marble. Nowadays people might say shooter for anything 3/4" or higher (but you can bet they haven't actually knuckled down with one of those really big marbles).

Getting into the ID's and technicalities can sometimes take one out of the simple enjoyment. But I still have my moments of realizing that I really do love these little bits of glass.

That's what I'm talkin about! Thanks guys!

Would be good to see some classics. Thanks!

Please back off from making this personal. Thanks, everyone.

If this thread goes south, I'll want to leave part of it up here, and move part of it to the BOISZ. Please don't make it hard for me to split it up.

Thanks for sharing! Nice to see the dates and places.

How about some boots?

Interesting ..... Thanks for posting!

Got it!

Fascinating. What a great display. In your opening post you said 1980 ... did you mean 1800? 1880? How many more countries will we find marbles were made in? I can hardly wait to learn.

Here ya go! Reduced some. Nice piece of modern marble history.

I went back and looked through my old emails and found that I was told yes, the marbles in that box fluoresce. And looking through an old Gropper thread, I see it was reported that Gino said the box did contain Pelts. Now I just hope I remember all that this time. I'm going to call my marble a probable Pelt until any other info comes in to counter that assessment.

Here is the Opal Agates box I hold out hope that mine might belong in.

Neat. Super sweet. And that answers that question! (By the way, the only reason I realized mine was handgathered was because I could see the whorl under blacklight.) I looked again at the 1927 document which mentioned Milkies and I noticed that it showed very small numbers for the Milkies in comparison with some other marbles. You really did get lucky. The other option I keep coming back to for my fluorescent one is Gropper's Opal Agates. They appear to be the right color. I don't remember if I ever got confirmation about their fluorescence though. I may have gotten the answer and could be in denial. lol.

I know "milky" is a long shot as a name for marbles in this shade. But I gotta pull it out anyway. One of these days maybe I'll be right, or someone else will recognize it and let me know. This marble is handgathered. Opalescent. And brilliantly fluorescent.

In 1927 would they still have been handgathered?

.... what would Peltier Milky Marbles have been in 1927? I can't remember if I've asked this before or not. I've been doing a lot of organizing and have found all sorts of cool things I forgot about. And one had a mention of Milky Marbles .....

Here's the new material: It is insight into the planning and networking which took place before Pink launched the Marble King tournament, to help publicize the Marble King brand. It starts with a 1937 letter from Berry Pink to Sellers Peltier. 1939: 1939: And here is a bonus from the same time period. Isn't it great?

Okay, one more old article I found in that album before I post all the neat new stuff. This is from 1939. It shows that Pink was still making appearances that year at the Scripps Howard tournaments -- the one which held the national tournament at Wildwood.

A little birdie -- maybe it was a carrier pigeon -- flew some awesome images to me today. I'll add them to the next post. First a little note: While I was loading those new pix into my photobucket album I saw a 1943 article I'd forgotten about. I still don't remember much if anything else Marble-King-related in newspapers in 1943 or later so I don't know if this was part of any ongoing sponsorship by Pink or if maybe the prizes were leftover. But ... well ... here:

Here's the link: http://www.ebay.com/itm/181144919987 Love the crown. As far as I know the Berry Pink tournaments led to one national event, held at the New York World's Fair in 1940. There were also local Berry Pink tournaments in 1941, but I'm pretty sure not a national. That is, not a national tournament sponsored by Pink. The Scripps Howard national tournament still happened that year. I don't think there were any Berry Pink tournaments in 1942, and I think the war was given as the reason. I also don't recall seeing any evidence of any Berry Pink tournaments after that. Of course he was still selling marbles and I'd guess showing up at tourneys. But I don't recall finding any tournament announcements in newspapers after that. I believe Berry Pink was affiliated with the Scripps Howard tournaments before 1940. My guess is that it was his ego and his desire to sell Peltier's glass marbles which made him break out on his own. In 1940, the Scripps Howard tournament still used clay marbles. p.s., all that information is from my memory and is subject to revision if I double check it. It is based on my searches of newspaper and a few other documents from that time. (not just my searches -- other people helped -- but I search a lot of newspapers) Some Berry Pink publicity might suggest a higher profile role for Pink for a longer duration, but in my experience his claims often don't mesh with other available facts. One stray bit of trivia: The game played at Berry Pink tourneys in 1940 and 1941 was Rota, if I recall correctly, not Ringer.

lol What kind of marble would you pose in tar pits?