Steph

I loved his straight face ... and the brown head boy's occasional grin.

Meow

What a beautiful card. Very creative. Merry Christmas to everyone! And peace in the New Year.

The mica is scrumptious.

It's like a tornado. That underwater photo is very revealing.

Pre-Jabo? Scandalous! (pretty mibs!)

Will do.

Nice array

Thanks for letting us know, Cheryl. And thanks for the link, Steve.

Nifty! What does the cover on the red box look like? (Not meaning to sidetrack your question about sets with purple)

The emphasis on recycling adds to my impression of this being a thrifty 40's or 50's thing. How big was recycling before the war? I have some neat examples of recycled materials used for packaging. My best is some fur cleaning powder which says "hand grenade container" on the bottom. ( : Posted a pic of that one here once.

I'm rooting for the post office. Keep saying I'm going to start writing letters again. Maybe I'll write a few this afternoon. If you're on my mailing list maybe you'll know in a few days if I kept my resolve. ( :

From a 1939 article. They don't seem to hold a lot of marbles. But they do say Champion. And it's from when Berry Pink was selling Pelts. Fairly large size pic -- might need to double click for full size

Well ... now that I look more closely, yes, I've seen mesh bags with just Champion, not Champ Jr. BRB with a pic. (I have a cropped pic. Wanna see if I can find a more complete copy. :-)

One of the versions said Peltier on the side: Berry Pink later put his brand on Champion boxes. I'm pretty sure he was still boxing up Pelts at least part of the time he used this style.

I have seen Champion on a box. Related?

<insert joke about Ric having me on ignore > The time frame I'm thinking of for all of this is marbles from the 40's, packaged in the 50's. The patches in Post #3 are ones I would guess were from 1940's so it doesn't surprise me that they'd be in the stock Master bought from Akro. I was surprised by the corks in Post #2. But in a way they made sense. I've never been sure of when cork production ended but the corks in Craig's boxes don't exactly fit the types I'm familiar with from the 1930's, so maybe they were produced later after all. Chuck's aventurine marble looks more Master to me than Akro fwiw, but ......

I forgot to follow up and see if I wanted to raise my bid. Was almost afraid to look just now. So glad to see the spiderscout got way out of my price range.

The photo is at least from the 1950's, which does show how long some marbles can lie around waiting for packaging, doesn't it. In a way that makes the possibility of those lovely corks in the OP being boxed up in the 1950's sound even more plausible.

Horrific. Those poor kids.

Great shot. Looks sort of like parachute material.

Check out the ad at the top of p. 113 in American Machine-Made Marbles. It's a little confusing. It has some pictures of Master boxes, and it has some text which goes about like this: MASTER MARBLES AKRO AGATES in Packages and in Bulk ---- BRAND NAMES ---- CLEARIES ----- GLASSIES OPAL ----- GAME CLIMAX ----- UNIQUE ROYAL ----- HERO The paragraph from the text on p. 108 which mentions the old Akro stock says: Masters in Akro boxes is the reverse of what you have, but maybe this is still the explanation. p.s. Another ad on p.113 shows Master was still using the Akro name in flyers in 1963 or later. (I don't see a date but the ad has a five digit zip code.)