Steph

I'd also suggest Japanese as a possibility. For some reason that hasn't been a popular idea. There's "made in Japan" packaging, but it has been argued that it was the box which was made in Japan, not the marbles. To me that doesn't seem consistent with the purpose of country of origin packaging laws. But I'm an amateur, so ? The mibs below aren't an exact match for yours but maybe similar enough to give pause. First a novelty box marked Made in Japan. The marbles here were listed as 11/16". (extra pix, click to enlarge) Second is a box of "Bolitas" which says "Industria Japonesa", which to me indicates Japanese manufacture, possibly intended for sale in South America. From a Marblealan auction. He said they measured about 1/2". (sorry, no clicking, wish the pix were larger but this is what we got! :-)

Green and black really work don't they.

Kewl! Thanks for the pix! But how does it work?! . .

Which colors? I think I see the three on one of them, but not sure of the shades. Dark blue, light blue and yellow on one?

Ya kill me, Rich! Ya wanna melt history?! We're still learning from it. lol

In 1913 in a German pricelist the peppermint with mica was called "Union mit Sternen" (union with stars). I don't know how long the name had been around before that. (That's all I got! lol. back to watching!)

Busy bee! The last one is intriguing.

She's obviously one of them.

So which one is the mystery green which seems/seemed only to be associated with the moss agates found at Alley? Is this it, Ron? The one near the top center of this pic?

LOL. See me trying to see both sides? I WANT the marbles to be Alley. But I'm trying to see other explanations. I'm trying to see where the blue and gold cullet could have come from and why it would be found in abundance in the Alley dump. Here's an example of marbles I wanted to have be Alley. Lizzy posted these a year or two before the Alley patch finds were posted. She said they had been ID-ed as Vitro. But there still seemed an air of mystery in the ID. I asked her if it was a sort of default ID after everything else had been ruled out. And it seemed as if that might have been so. So when the possibility of Alley patches came to light, I wanted that to be the answer. Whaddaya think? Was the original ID right? Vitro? I SO wanted them to be Alley.

That's what I thought. Some contemp makers are able to use busted up Jabos to make new marbles. But they're able to control the glass somewhat. How would that work if they were throwing them all into a pot? Wouldn't that be muddy? But if indeed the cull was shipped into Alley and if mostly the blue and gold ones are still being found at Alley maybe that explains why. Maybe the blue and white marble cull (for instance) could be used okay and most of it got used up. But the blue and gold cull turned muddy so it got left behind.

It might be the code you are using rather than the image extension. First, I guess I could ask what the extension is. Are they .jpg's? But in case it's about the code, make sure that you have a single [img] in front of the web address and a single [/img] on the other end. [img=http://usera.imagecave.com/marbdog/Wirepull-copy.jpg] If that doesn't work, we'll try it again! -s

Nice! I'm kinda hoping somewhere along the line someone sees fit to add pix of those special Texas giveway mibs to the thread. hint hint hint. (ya know, the ones Beri Fox gave out at the Texas show?)

One more reason I really really wanted Alleys to be in Rosenthal boxes - and really thought they could be - was Berry Pink being an executive at Rosenthal at the same time that he was Alley's partner in Sistersville. Would he buy marbles from his competition? (if he could avoid it?) Check out this Rosenthal box BJ sold. The story with it was that it was given to a boy at his 5th grade graduation in 1931. (4-vane cat a later addition of course.) I know some think that Rosenthal boxes had Masters in them, but with Berry Pink being a partner at Alley and the sales manager for Rosenthal, would they buy Master marbles for their boxes? p.s., which shade of green was the one which was not easily associated with other factories? Is that the one in this box?

This is another idea I've been wondering about:

Oh perty. I am sooo on the fence about these. Here's one idea I'm playing with currently. Why were those machines busted up in Ravenswood? Could it have been patch-making machines? Would swirl machines have been enough to bring in lawyers or cause such ire? Patches were the new thing. Maybe that's the patent/investment which someone was trying to protect. Could it have been? I liked being able to potentially credit Alley with some of the oddballs which paraded by. I'll hunt a couple of those up. You know - the kind which looked they were made by 3 different companies in turn. Maybe started out at Vitro, but using Akro glass, and then someone else went and added an extra stripe of color just to throw us off the scent. You know the ones I mean! lol And I really wanted some of the mibs in Rosenthal boxes to be Alleys. Supposedly there's an odd shade of green on one of the moss agates from Sistersville. It's mentioned in AMMM. At the time of that writing it was not known to be associated with any other company. I so very much wanted Alley to have made patches. :-)

I'm still working on getting more of Ron's up. In the meantime you might enjoy these which Sandy and her family dug from the Alley dumpsite in Sistersville. (click to enlarge)

The base here looks kinda white to me in the pic, but it's gray in hand. It glows. (Dustin's auction pic, my mib) Joe did a good job of catching the gray and the inky blue ribbons in his pic. I'll bet this one glows - hmm, I'll bet a dime.

(click pix to enlarge) <--- look for pelt in this pic

Gonna start uploading Ron's pix now. There are lots of them. So keep on having a good time over there in the WV swirl thread. I'll be awhile. I'm posting pix 40% to 60% of Ron's originals. If you need the bigger views of some, that can be done. Here's Ron's introduction to the photo collection, containing some history about Lawrence Alley, and some things to make you think.

100% of my presumed koko's fluoresce noticeably. Not brightly but noticeably. (please do not ask me how many I have ;-)

I wonder if the patent was in the category of "design". Maybe the simple lines were the innovation. "Design patent" at Wikipedia If so, I don't know where to search for it. I found a design patent today for something else pretty quickly but I got lucky in the clues I was given. I don't know where to hunt for designs by date. [edit: I might have figured out how to hunt for designs by date, but I haven't hit on yours yet.]

Oooph! I'd take 'em for that! Here's that link. http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=280518074326

Here's what I learned in response to the email S.O.S. I sent out about early marble ads: In the first decade of the 1900's, the gold-colored marbles were referred to by such names as "Klondike Gold Nugget" (1903) and "Genuine Glass Klondike" (1904). In German the spellings included Klondiche and Klondyche. In the early 1910's, U.S. and Canadian advertisements included descriptions such as "Fancy Gold Band Marbles", "Gold Band Alleys" and "Fine Gold-Band Glass Marbles". The name Klondike was still in use by German marble makers at that time and later. In the 1960's [edit: and 1950's] they were being called "Sandwich Glass Marbles". And this may have been the time when the term Lutz came into use [edit: for marbles], because of the supposed Sandwich Glass connection. [Edit: Baumann records the first known use of the word Lutz for marbles as 1968.] edit: "Lutz glass" was in use for collectible items from the Sandwich works by at least 1939. That's not marbles though. [i'm still digging so this post might get more edits.]