Steph

Ooo, glowage. Those are some nice blacklight pix. And that ghost cork is sweet. lol. Thanks Alan. Gorgeous as always. I'm not falling for the popeye tho'. Did you make that one, Scott?

Gee whiz Winnie, my heart skipped a beat when I saw the popeye! Then I read what you said and was able to catch my breath! lol. very nice array!

oooooeeeeey! Onyx? (white cork inside?)

What marbles did Akro make in the one-inch version? Would love to see yours! Thanks! (edit: obviously I know of some styles which were made as 1-inchers but there are some I'm not sure about. would love to see examples in any case :-)

lol. Dani and I don't always have to agree either. :-) I'm still inclined to believe your cork is a moss agate, Bill. Lemonades, limeades, blue eggyolks, etc. are moss agates. But whether I'm right on that one or not, Dani and I are still together on not calling just any translucent mib an Ace. If it doesn't have a name, then I guess it doesn't.

It might not be worth it if you need to sell marbles for a profit in a small amount of time. But if you do have the time, it can be fun. Not that many winners to be found, but/and/so when you find them it is very cool.

Don't take the narrow definition. Take what is. That sounds flippant but it's serious. Trying to define Aces with words, and trying to take Akro's ad writers' version of the description too literally, rules out some true Aces and might seem to force non-Aces into the category. There are some known examples of Aces. Using those to identify other Aces is better than trying to use words. In my humble opinion. Actually, the marble you are showing looks very much like a Moss Agate. I think that's what it is. As well as I can tell from a small photo. Moss Agates come in corks and patches. (and in swirls which may or may not be loose corks). (p.s., your popeye is not a moss agate.) Oh don't get me started on Specials! LOL I won't go there. (not in this thread )

Some are worth a few bux. Some can be worth significantly more than a "few" bux. Handmade ones. Hand-gathered ones. Akro flinties and moonies. Some special Masters. Maybe someone could think of others. But it can be tough to ID the good ones. Hard to describe them. Hard to ID them in pix. And not generally worth the postage to mail them anywhere for ID unless you're really sure you're onto something. It's an activity for leisure time, I think, to sort through them. Not good odds of finding anything worth money. I've found some good ones just because I liked opaques and clearies for their own sakes, and I looked at them in different lights and then occasionally something stood out which I hadn't noticed before. Oh yes, the ones which light up nicely under UV can be worth something to the right people. I had good luck selling those on ebay. To vaseline glass collectors more than to vintage marble collectors. Wavy lines? As in transparent swirls?

Sorry Bill, I must disagree. The Ace has gotta have fire. The catalog page I posted isn't all of the Akro styles ever made. The Moss Agate corks aren't on that page. Carnelians aren't there. At least some of the mibs distributed in Imperial boxes aren't there. Tri-Onyx Agates aren't there - not that those have a translucent base but I'm on a roll. lol But anyway, the Ace is "opalescent". There are some corks which I can't place with a name. But I'm not ready to chuck mystery marbles into the Ace heading. When all the translucent mibs get lumped together, that shortchanges Aces. Edit: lol, did you add the moss agate question while I wasn't looking? Yes, some of the translucent base corks are moss agates. How many different color combos? That would be fun learning about. If that's possible.

lol. yeah that picture bugs me too. but it is pretty funny considering.

Nice find on the site, Pat. Cool images there.

Another pic of Dani's, another black one, more tightly filled again.

Here's Dani's pic of a loosely filled Ace.

the ones Charles shows? Do you mean Dave's mibs? I'm not sure about those actually. I'd want to see them in hand. He does have them in hand, so I'll take his word on them. Except for the plain one? The ribbon colors on his look right. The top right view of his black one has an Ace-like hint of rosiness. And check it out, the base of the black one has a grain like a Realer. Thanks bunches for paying such close attention to the ad's words! LOL. I find that phrase frustrating - "a narrow, distinct strip of opalescent glass". Actually, I suspect the ad writers viewed the base as a "strip". In this one it's sorta hard to tell whether the red or the white is the ribbon. hmmm. Anyway, the ad writers were sometimes more poetic than accurate. I sorta pick and choose what to take literally with them. The main concept I take from this ad is the word "opalescent". There are some other Ace features I think I recognize just from having Aces in hand but I get frustrated trying to put the description into words. Aces have filaments, but those could be taken for the wispy white you often see on Moss Agates, and they're not. Then there can be somewhat milky glass, which could be mistaken for Moss Agate glass, but it's not. And don't use the milky glass as a requirement because sometimes you can't even see it, because the more solid white is packed so tightly. arg. Words! We need more ace pix. Dani has shown a GORGEOUS one with the yellow-orange ribbon, I think. Need to find that.

One note: when backlighting to test, be sure the orange comes from the base, not the ribbon. Orange and red ribbons can cause reflections which make the base seem to glow. I'm not sure one way or the other about Akro making Aces in any other colors than the basic 5 shown in the ad and the sample case. As Dave shows there are corky marbles which glow, but did Akro sell them as Aces? We know Akro expanded their varieties of Prize Names and Tri-Colors beyond the five color combos they originally advertised, but I have reservations about Aces. I simply don't know. One major obstacle to learning more about what Akro meant as Aces has been the general lack of awareness that Aces had anything special about them. Most people don't know there was any issue to study. There hasn't been much evidence to debate with or about.

Were they a marble company? (lol) Before Alley moved to Pennsboro they were The Lawrence Glass Novelty Co. And then even though their official name in Pennsboro was Alley Agate they were supposedly known as "the dish factory" to the locals. (source: AMMM, pp. 36, 37)

The largest allowed in all the tournaments I remember reading about has been 3/4". However, Vitro labelled their bags of larger marbles "shooters" in the 1938 ad below. In the 1950's they had packages called "Shooters" which contained marbles as small as 11/16" and as large as 1". (If the Shooters packaging ever contained marbles smaller than 11/16", I'm not aware of it, but I won't say they didn't.) However, in the 1950's Marble King's idea of shooters was more in line with yours. Sometimes MK's shooters were very close to average size.

Fab question Jack!

I know the feeling. I'm in transition on my computer too. Wasn't sure I was going to be able to find the ad. Luckily I remembered where I'd posted it last and got the address from there. Here's that ace from your auction. Hope you don't mind me taking the liberty. :-) It's a good illustration of the glow of the base. (edit: Note the grain. In my experience Aces seem to have a grain, somewhat similar to Acme Realers. Coincidence?) (click for a little more detail) auction

Here you go, Dani. Ace

Moss Agate: (additional images, click to enlarge) . . . . . . Ace: (click to enlarge)

Sorry guys. We're still sorta working out what rating the board will have and I think at this point it's somewhere around PG-13. All I'm sure about is that it's somewhere between Marble Mental and Scott's board. And right now we're more into letting people work things out themselves and figure out how to coexist, than we are into policing things. If we were policing everything something would slip through and then someone would be miffed that so-and-so got away with "it" when they didn't. For that matter, I'm not sure that Lou or Sue even saw that hiccup on page 1. I did. I winced when Kevin made his post. It was a poke at Scott, and out of place in this happy "who's going to Vegas" thread. When Scott poked back I cringed again but couldn't blame him. I was just glad the thread went back to its intended purpose. So since there were a couple of still-smoldering threads I didn't even bring this one up to Lou or Sue.

Hi Craig.

Helmets Source: Splattman (these and a few more Helmet pix)

Happy Birthday Chippendales Video (censored)