Steph

First, be very limber:

0? [edit: oh you said "aren't". My answer should have been "100%?"] I didn't recognize the marbles but it looks like others do. Grandpamarbles' marbles? I can hardly believe the guy is keeping this up. It has been suggested that he is in federal crime territory here. It seems that way to me too.

What kinds of Vitro examples do you have with transparent colored bases - amber, blue, green, whatever. Would love to see. Thanks!

Awesome!!!! p.s. LOL @ Bill McCaleb's pic.

That's a relief to hear. Well, Okie .... let us know, please!

I wouldn't pay for it, Okie. Not yet anyway. Good chance Joe actually still has them, and if he doesn't have them, then good chance he can tell you who does. Your Paypal payment won't be protected if the seller closes his account right after he receives the money. By the time you have evidence that the marble isn't arriving, it could be too late. I'd talk to Joe before I sent payment. If you've already sent payment, you could file a protest right now. Paypal suggests you wait, but last I heard they don't actually require it.

Gary, he didn't respond to my queries. I sent him two. In one I included a link to this thread. I shall be looking for his contact information but not to ask him to defend himself. At least 15 of the 23 marbles he posted for sale using pix from Joe's site are firmly and comfortably in private collections. Including the Golden Rebel. (I think the count might be 16 confirmed, but will say 15 to be safe.) Sorry, Gary. This isn't speculation. He offered marbles for sale which he didn't own and didn't have on consignment. He will take in over a thousand dollars for marbles he doesn't own if all the bidders pay.

I was taking a tour through Joe's Akro pages and this one knocked me out of my chair. Gotta share it somewhere! (so here!) source and more views

Hi Bob. It's Bob's birthday too. Too many Bob's with killer camera skills. Oh wait, it's not possible to have too many. lol Happy Birthday Bob.

What he said.

Heard from a reliable source that those are not the seller's marbles. So someone is bidding $420 on a golden rebel the seller does not possess.

LOL. That's way too cute. Whose birthday is it?

his site? which would that be? his ebay store, or does he have another site?

Tempted to bid high on the golden rebel just to stop the sale. Not going to because I don't have that much nerve. But that sale looks like something someone would do if they had no ethics and were closing up shop. If you sort their current listings by time ending, you see a whole line up of Joe's marble photos as the seller's last active auctions. Followed by a string of bulk lots with $20 buy-it-nows. If they don't care about their ebay ID they might be going for one big sale before they pack up their wagon and get out of ebay sales. They can take the money, cash out their paypal account, and go - before anyone has a chance to ask for refunds. Or maybe it's totally innocent. Maybe the seller loaned those to Joe originally. Or maybe Joe has consigned his own marbles to them with permission to use his photos. Consigned the marbles to someone who uses Alan's text verbatim and uses Dani's pic for their profile. ai yi yi ...... I still haven't heard back from the seller or from Joe. So I still don't know what their story might be.

His ebay profile pic: Alley board posted by Dani:

I've sent a note to ask why they used Joe's pix, and ask if they are selling the actual marbles from the photos.

Not meaning to overlook the point about the wording which was copied from Alan. The words and styles and font colors. Very creepy awkward.

They're Joe's pix alright. I suppose they could possibly be that seller's marbles. Joe did borrow some marbles for some of his photos. ????????????????? Hopefully Joe will see and either make it clear that the marbles do belong to this seller or find a way to cut through eBay's formal reporting maze to stop the fraud.

The green backgrounds made me go to Joemarbles.com. That's his trademark, so to speak. Joe's Golden Rebel photos Joe's Spiderman photos

Yeah, photobucket is easy. I mostly use that. For what it's worth though, using the gallery is different from using attachments. No click needed. If you put images in your gallery album, you get a separate html address for them. You can use that address to post the image without it being in the little thumbnail box. Here's Matthew's Dave Becker pic from the gallery. using the web address and the tags like so [img=http://marbleconnection.invisionzone.com/uploads/1285239778/gallery_1920_199_389575.jpg]

At the top of the page under the Marble Connection banner do you see links for "Forums", "Members", "Gallery" and "Calendar"? Follow that gallery link and if you upload things there, they should show on the banner until the next person uploads enough to slide your photos over.

The gallery banner shows the most recent uploads to folks' albums.

fun stuff