Steph

I'm not picky! The question arose about how to tell ribbon cores apart from cat's eyes. I guess most of the time that might be "easy", but maybe not for a handmade newbie, especially not with examples like this one below floating around. So I'm tossing it out to the pros. This is from Joemarbles.com:

A ribbon core is a handmade marble. A cat's eye is machine made. Here is a thread with many examples of cat's eyes in it: Japanese Cat's Eye? USA cat's eye? I did a quick search for some ribbon cores to try to help you out with that. I didn't find many pix, and I can totally see how you might think a ribbon core such as this one shown at Joemarbles.com looks like a cat's eye. I'm actually quite insecure about identifying any handmades. I'd like to see more examples myself. I think I'll start a thread in the main area to invite pix of ribbon cores for you. Show Us Your Ribbon Cores

Please! Thanks! I'm feeling a need for some more education in handmades. Plus eye candy is always nice.

awesome! and cute at the same time!

Great! Thanks again. -s

That's cool, m!b$. That's two more uses of the name than I already knew about. Or thought I knew about. The spotted dick I've been curious about is a ceramic, I believe. White with black spots, I think. My list of links to handmades threads tells me to go to a thread at Marble Mental. But I can't get there. Edit: What Duffy said. Thanks!

Anyone have a Spotted Dick? Got pix?

I noticed Mike slid a wish into another thread. Hope you're having a good one.

Bump! I don't have any good pix, but I'll confess to liking orange peel on pelts. :-)

Pete, do you have a "macro" option? The one which is specially for close-ups of things such as flowers? p.s., looks like good sorting on the pelts. There are some sunsets and some bloodies there.

Dang. (p.s. here's the pic)

Al, I'm a little more confused now than I was before. I looked in AMMM and they have this type of bag pictured. Not any with just two marble colors, but a 14 count Cat Eyes bag. And AMMM also says Bogard used MK's. . . . but of course yeah I know about that guy in Florida.

I think they're cool. I was sittin' on my hands because I was slightly worried about the Bogard Cat Eyes bags. Couldn't remember if that was one of the sets known to be forged. But that's a nice spread overall. Bonanza for cat's eye lovers.

Neat! That really goes! Like a pile driver or something! lol No kidding, that's cool.

Bump for Pete

There's something to that comparison. I don't have any strong feelings about the Miller swirl. I just know I don't have any. Unfortunately, the pre-Freese label leads to mixed up id's. With Miller you at least know you're in the Peltier family. The pre-Freese label leads some people to advertise their corkscrews as from 1920. That may only be 10 years off but that was a pretty pivotal 10 years for the company. And it leads some people to see eyelashes and conclude Akro. I know I used to do that. When I learned that Masters could also have eyelashes it increased my Master collection. lol er, I mean, good point. Love that aventurine! LOL

Hiya Clamdigger. I realize you are asking for some ID's but I moved this to the general chat forum anyway because these really need to be shown off. IMHO! For ID's it's usually best to focus on one group per thread. Usually a smallish group, but one group in any case. So you might want or need to start new threads anyway. In the meantime, WOW. -s

Very nice eyelashes. :-) I don't know what this one is. It could be Akro, I guess. However, eyelashes don't necessarily mean any particular maker. "Pre-freese" is a notion which has caused many mistaken IDs. Ira Freese's inventions had nothing to do with eyelashes being there or not. Akro introduced corks in 1929 or early 1930. Patches a little later. The Ira Freese patent which people want to associate with eyelashes was from earlier in the 1920's, so it came before all of those. Thus none of these marbles are "pre-freese". They are all later. So "pre-freese" doesn't explain the eyelashes. To the best of my understanding. p.s., still very nice eyelashes! And love that aventurine!

That's a rather broad question. :-) I can appreciate a well-made reproduction box. This one isn't very pleasing aesthetically though, not to me, and it looks worse and worse each time I look at it again. I have some lovely contemporary marbles which could be taken for vintage. They look sweet each time I look at them. I guess it helps that there are happy memories associated with how I got them. Also, I wasn't told they were original. So there was never any let down. I always knew who made them. Lotsa issues. As you know. (lol)

Yeah . . . the forgers do an okay job of making them seem old and weathered. But so far they don't make them look professional. Here's one of the 5x5 boxes (from Lloyd's auction). Look how sharp this is. Compare the box in question: It looks like it was made with a rubber stamp. The font doesn't look right and the blurry, incomplete impression sticks out like a sore thumb. If there ever was a time when Gropper didn't invest in nice-looking boxes, my gut feeling is that it would have been before they started jobbering marbles. By the time of "Prima Agates", Gropper was bigtime and they knew the power of presentation. I'm sure of it.

Gropper was a jobber. They distributed marbles made by others. They put their name on the package though. If that's "real" then I think it's a nice find. Something about the print on this box looks a little wrong to me. And maybe the construction of the box itself. Not saying it IS wrong. However, with the known forgers about I want to fish up some other examples before I say more. Maybe someone else will recognize it as A-OK. Where'd you find it, if you can say? p.s. here are some Gropper pix: http://marbleconnection.invisionzone.com/index.php?showtopic=6792

lol @ laughing at the snow. Congratulations!

$5000 chicken! (auction)

tasty turkey. yum. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!