Steph

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.

Craig, Are you saying you haven't seen marbles like those in the boxes you show as singles in the wild?

Clyde, Nice bag, are you sure it's from 1957? If so, it seems some of those marbles must have been laying around for a good long while before they were packaged.

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:

The paragraph from the text on p. 108 which mentions the old Akro stock says:

When the Akro Agate Company closed in 1951, Master Glass purchased a large stock of Akro marbles, packaging materials and glass formulas, as well as the right to use the Akro logo and trademark. It is reported that for some time Master Glass sold this old stock together with some of its own marbles in boxes marked Akro Agate. A very few examples exist of Chinese checker sets labeled "Chinese Akro Agate Checkers -- manufactured by Master Glass Co."

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.)

Four years later, I sure wish I could remember why I included "Climax" and some of those others in the list of names for Masters! Where did I get that from? I wouldn't have pulled it out of thin air. Was it in a marble book? Or in an ad?

Edit: Yes, it's in an ad in a marble book -- American Machine-Made Marbles, p. 113.

But it's confusing. It says Master Marbles, but right under that it says Akro Agates. The ad goes something like this:

Soooo, I am guessing that's from 1951 or later. Just guessing though. 1951 is when AMMM says that Master acquired old Akro stock along with the right to use the Akro logo and trademark.

An ad which is definitely from later than 1951 still has the Akro Agate name included. I don't see a date but I know it's later because it says Cat's Eye. It goes about like this:

Actually, I think that ad would be from 1963 or later, because in the contact information it has a five digit zip code.

Interesting. Beautiful marbles.

Fwiw, for some reason I wrote Hero down as a Master name back in 2008.

Of course I knew it to be an Akro name but I still listed it as a Master name also for some reason. I'll try to reconstruct why I did that.

American Machine-Made Marbles says that Master acquired unsold Akro marbles in 1951. I wouldn't have guessed those corks to still be in the Akro stock then, but could be.

That blue/yellow/red one is cool.

Perfect! *applause*

So fierce!

Modern Reproduction IMO. Lots of things are off IMO, The uneven lines, the leaf shaped end decorations are not consistent to original types, and why would one of the farmers have a Chinese style hat. We all know they were called Chinas because of the material they were made of.

Agreed.

Welll ... it's a cool item.

If it were mine, I would definitely hang onto it hoping for more clues to surface.