Steph

Sure thing.

If anything in that batch explains the "Miller swirls", I don't know about it. I can't remember seeing anyone explain the Pelts which go so wild that you might not be able to find their seams.

That's where it seems the problem with the Miller legend is, if I understand correctly. Miller made machines ... but did they have anything to do with swirly Pelts?

Patents and other items involving the name "Miller", to be sorted later.

1. Process and apparatus for feeding glass

Inventor: William J. Miller

Assignee: Hartford Empire Company

Patent number: 1717802

Filing date: Jan 31, 1921

Issue date: Jun 18, 1929

2. Machine for Manufacturing Marbles and Similar Articles

Inventor: William J. Miller

Assignee: Victor J. Greene

Patent number: 1601699

Filing date: Dec 12, 1924

Issue date: Sep 28, 1926

3. Was this the one which is called THE Hartford-Empire patent?

Process and Apparatus for Feeding Glass

Inventor: William J. Miller

Assignee: Hartford

Patent number: 1942035

Filing date: Dec 20, 1929

Issue date: Jan 2, 1934

Material still to be sorted:

Some history as told in 1948

Marble making machinery is mentioned in connection with the William J. Miller Company in Golden Progress: History and Official Program of the 50th Anniversary Celebration of Swissvale, Pennsylvania, 1898-1948. I hadn't realized he had his own company. Was he also affiliated with any particular marble manufacturer?

The book online is broken into parts. The marble mention is on p. 81, found in Part 7.

Title page: Part 2

(click to enlarge - it's kinda large, might need to double click to get to full size)

Mr. Miller had many patents on glass. Plugging in the keywords, miller, glass and swissvale at the Google patents page pulls up many entries.

http://www.google.com/patents?q=miller+glass+swissvale

Leave out the word "glass" and you get bunches more. He apparently did a lot of work with pottery also. And had a "pottery engineering company", also in Swissvale?

Which if any of his other patents might be connected with marble making?

Reminder to self: Did we once have something specific about a Miller machine being used by a lithographer?

The times I remember the word "checking" with glass, it was said by contemporary marble makers describing some sort of cracks in the marbles.

I might remember seeing the story Mon is talking about, about the cache of previously unrecognized types found in the east. If I did, it might only have been once and it might not be on the board anymore. A couple of years worth of posts were lost during a storage crunch.

Wow, they make great looking eyes! Kudos to whoever realized they would!

Hiya Sue!

And a special Merry Christmas just for you!

This patent filed in 1947 is interesting in different ways. It's about the creation of aventurine in batch glass. The patent itself is about stopping the aventurine from crystallizing. However, it also points out that some people would try to achieve the crystallization on purpose in their batches, for art glass.

Green-Colored Opal Glass

OMG, yes. That is gorgeous.

I think Mike made a point worth underscoring in the other thread:

I doubt that the marble sorters/graders in the dark old Peltier factory would have even noticed the aventurine, and if so, would likely have discarded such marbles due to the "specks", or something.

That made me think of how we sometimes ask newbies to go outside to check to see if their marbles sparkle. Workers were sorting marbles and boxing them up and maybe never seeing them in the sunlight. I wonder if there were some people in the factories who never realized that their marbles had aventurine in them at all.

Merry Christmas.

Safe travels to all who are on the roads.

Sorry, Bob, I don't get it. That doesn't really look like it would be an effective diaper for one amphibian, much less three.

Bad Stephanie. Merry Christmas Bob! And if you want to enlighten me about nappies, I'd love it.

Looks like a number of Peerless Patches.

And a blue and white mib near the top which I wanna pick up to see if it's an NLR. Not at all sure it is but would like to check.

Thanks Cees. I think that's it.

Ausgezeitnet!

...... did I spell that right?

That's hot.

I see a problem with that advertising picture of the Popeye marble box. The bag with a waist up view of Popeye is for the rare and expensive larger Popeye box that holds 36 marbles. I suspect an advertising agency manipulated pictures of the two bags and possibly types of marbles shown. I own both types of bags - the waist up view of Popeye bag measures 3.5" x 5.25". That bag would not fit into the common #116 box. The point being that what showed up pictured in trade catalogs may have never made it to a retail sales outlet. This casts some doubt on our ability to verify marbles from sales catalogs.

Interesting. Here's the full ad that was clipped from. It shows two different bags with a waist up character. [insert intelligent comments here when/if I can think of any]

edit: I've never paid much attention to bag styles, only the marbles. Entering watch and learn mode.

My principle concern at this moment is that Ron not feel intimidated. He's a new member to this board. I want him to feel welcome.

Other members are long time participants in the greater marble community - much longer than I - so I'm a little intimidated myself by some of the give and take and undercurrents. ( :

Thus, I have locked the thread for the time being and am forwarding the link to Lou for consideration.

P.S. Re your add'l Post Steph. Ron has not confessed to the people on eBay unless you know something I don't know.

Why does he need to?

He put a reserve on it. If no one meets it, no sale. If someone does meet it, then hopefully he'll honor the sale. He has no other obligation. That's how auctions with reserves work. No foul has been committed.

Edit to add: oh my gosh, if anyone is including that auction as part of their Christmas budget then wow. Doesn't seem prudent.

Christmas Holiday Hug for David. And Edith.

Did Silver Oxbloods really come with the original Popeye sets?

Here's a 1936 ad. Hard to be sure with the black and white but might those be silver oxbloods?

p.s. I'm pretty sure others will vouch for finding that style in popeye boxes. I think they came mostly in yellow boxes. iiuc.

p.s. Ron said he was willing to let people him, so I don't suppose he needs me stepping in.

I am just a little confused to see you seem to accuse him of something which he already confessed to, as if there were more he needed to "come clean" about.

Ron wrote:

Hi everybody

I think it is time to jump in here. I am the starter of this auction. And as somebody earlier already guessed, it is not my intention to sell it (I put a ridiculous high reserve on it). There are several reasons I started the auction:

David wrote:

I was just thinking that it would be a kind gesture to the people who are sincerely bidding in this auction and would greatly desire to own them if you ponied-up about what was actually going on and brought the auction to a close. <snipped> I hate to put it this way but your auction is a bit of a sham! David Chamberlain

Edith: You even have people on Facebook talking about your auction as if it were the greatest thing to have ever come down the pike.....

David, Ron has already "ponied up". Calling his auction a "sham" now is restating in a rather harsh way what Ron has already explained to us. There seems no malice in the event.

Ron doesn't owe Facebook posters or eBayers anything other than to follow through with the sale if someone does meet the reserve. He paid $55 for the listing. I don't see anything wrong with him letting it ride.

I guess if he gets the feeling that the marble collectors of the world will somehow unite and hold this against him forever he might decide to pull it.

My thought though is that he got our attention in a very effective way and I can hardly wait to see more of his marbles when he has time to share them with us.

Oh and if someone did offer him $750,000 then wow. What a delicious dilemma to have that kind of money to restart ones collection ... or pay off a mortgage ... or whatever.

Yes, BOTH.

It's definitely a one of a kind.

I have three of them.

Definitely more than 3.

But not too many or they wouldn't be separate flame points anymore. Unless we had a theoretical marble, in which case we could have infinitely many, even uncountably many, true flame points though they wouldn't be visible to the naked eye.

thank you, thank you very much.

Oh yeah!

wow, that choked me up just a little.

Wow. Look at the birthdays at the bottom of the homepage. Is three the record for one day?

Happy Birthday to you Mike ... & to Selbram ... & to Keltik if you chance to visit the board.