Steph

I've seen some different sizes given for them. I am pretty sure I have seen one offered which was over an inch. And it was by someone credible. Alan or Block. Both make some mistakes, but I guess I trust them on rootbeer floats or others made at Peltier that day. 11/16" is smaller than anything I've seen or any story I've heard though. 11/16" are pretty firmly ruled out whenever anyone asks about them. And they do come up relatively often. There are some possibly-foreign master-like banana-y mibs which tend to be about that size. They get a "no" verdict as Rootbeer Floats. edit: Block's BOOK says 11/16"? ?? I say "nova family" because it is natural to think of the marbles made with the novas on that day as related. It is my compromise between the purists and those who are inclined to call the whole run "novas". I understand that only one of the marbles in the run was a nova. What I still don't understand is about the other marbles besides the original 8 which are reported by credible people to be part of the extended family. Made on a later date, I gather. Wow, Galen just posted an awesome pair of pix at LOM: Rootbeer Floats. They are described as 1". They were made in 9/13/88 -- BEFORE THE NOVA RUN. edit: no they are not described as 1". They are described as an experiment for a 1" Rainbow. (Rainbow? that's what it looks like -- but looks like someone may have tried to rub the last letter out) While I'm linkin', here's David's article at MM: Root Beer Floats, Novas, and Pink Champagnes, Peltier Marble Company Here's my index to most of David's articles at MM: index. Since he's actively posting now, there are some new threads which will need to be added, such as current cat's eye threads. But those are still being added to in the main forum.

I wrote to the Los Angeles Times reprint office to try to get permission to share this whole article from 1924. First of all I wanted to simply find out if it was still under copyright, and then I asked how to go about getting permission to share in case it was. I got an answer which wasn't an answer, and then didn't hear back when I asked for clarification. So I shall share part and hope that this falls within the Fair Use provision of the copyright law. I tried to paraphrase it earlier but that was nowhere near as good as the real thing. So, that's some history of one American marble maker. The story was in part to announce the move the company had made from the rented shed where they first set up shop to a new building made specially for their growing business. Mexican (lower California) onxy was very popular in the 1920's for many items, for children and adults. And that was an exciting find. To remind you, here are some of the images we've seen before. The search started with an awesome picture of a man who may or may not be R. W. Walker. We don't know who he is. We do know he is not the father of "Frankie" because Frankie was Frank Doig Mitchell, the son of George Douglas Mitchell. The 2nd pic is Frankie at 12 or so, as he appeared in Popular Science. Then boxes the company sold. And a 1931 ad from George Sourlis. (click links below thumbnails for larger images) http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o151/modularforms/Stone/CaliforniaAgatesFactory_b.jpg http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o151/modularforms/Stone/1932_04_PopularScience_FrankieMitch.jpg http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o151/modularforms/Stone/CaliforniaAgates002b.jpg http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o151/modularforms/Stone/25OnyxMarbles_010b.jpg http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o151/modularforms/History/1931TRACY_WELLS_No117_p224_GSourlis.jpg But the best "find" was still to come! You know me. As much as we had learned it seemed like we were only in the middle of the story. I couldn't stop there! So I did a "bit" more searching on the net and ... I found Frank's children, Mia and Doug, thanks to a poem Mia wrote about her dad. It has been fantastic. They are so nice. And so proud of their father and grandfather. We 'chatted' a bit. It was awesome. One technical point they told me is something I suspected was true -- at some point the company name changed from the "California Agate Co." to the "California Onyx Co.". Among other things, I also learned that Frankie grew up to work on the Apollo spacecraft. How cool is that? And here .... I really need a drum roll. This is just sooooo wowww... Some of the family treasures, photos courtesy of Doug Mitchell. A couple of hundred California Agate marbles, practically factory fresh. Some of the other things the company made -- gear shift knobs, the base of a pen holder set, and a decorative piece of polished onyx with one edge left rough. And the real father of Frank, George Douglas Mitchell, the fighting Irishman who settled his family in Los Angeles after WWI and started making aggies. Note there are two different styles of gear shift knobs there. One is thicker than the other. Some have the metal inset with the name Calif. Onyx. Others don't. One thing which is still not clear is what their radiator caps looked like. (click links below thumbnails) http://i588.photobucket.com/albums/ss324/CalifOnyx/Marbles001_70pct.jpg http://i588.photobucket.com/albums/ss324/CalifOnyx/Marbles004_cropped.jpg http://i588.photobucket.com/albums/ss324/CalifOnyx/Marbles005_50pct.jpg http://i588.photobucket.com/albums/ss324/CalifOnyx/Marbles012_50pct.jpg http://i588.photobucket.com/albums/ss324/CalifOnyx/Marbles014_50pct.jpg http://i588.photobucket.com/albums/ss324/CalifOnyx/Marbles021_50pct.jpg http://i588.photobucket.com/albums/ss324/CalifOnyx/Marbles008_50pct.jpg http://i588.photobucket.com/albums/ss324/CalifOnyx/Marbles016_50pct.jpg

The person with the 0 feedback has revealed enough information about himself so that I can tell it is someone who has been reported to ebay many times as a problem buyer. More than one of his ebay IDs have been cancelled. He is a real collector but .... well, he brags a lot and not all of his claims are well-founded. He bids a lot but doesn't always pay for what he committed to buy. And as a seller, he has listed at least one really neat item, and then pulled it down, and then relisted it but it wasn't quite as neat the last time I saw him list it. (thinking of a pelt jobber box -- let me see if I can find that link where Art solved the mystery for me) (here's that link) Every seller has to start somewhere, and I sure don't envy this guinea seller having to start out in the current ebay environment where he is vulnerable to buyers for whom we cannot leave feedback. Now, here's where I'm going to give everyone something to razz me about ;-) -- the subject of faux guineas vs. real. I'm not sure as many are fake as people say. I don't give the 0-feedback bidder credit for owning a 15/16" guinea. Ohmigosh, I sure don't. He has bragged about how much he as paid for glass items which I'm pretty sure were modern but he thought were old. But I also am not sure that some people haven't interfered with legit guinea sales by talking about how no real guinea would have bubbles or some particular pattern. How can they be so sure no guinea could look like that? Not saying whether I think this guys mibs are real or not. I see why people would not think so and I would love to see clearer pix. But in the past I've thought some mibs had more potential to be real than they were being given credit for. Scott Patrick can apparently make guineas real enough to fool people like me (LOL) but I'm just not so sure that some people aren't a little too quick to write off some possible guineas. I really do feel for the challenges of collectors who have invested in marbles for years but who are now turning around and selling for the first time in today's market. Confident in their knowledge and knowing how much they've invested, but possibly facing for the first time this army of internet collectors with some pretty aggressive behavior and all our "common knowledge" based on reading the same sort of threads over and over on the boards. Rightly or wrongly, I'm feeling real sympathy for this seller. The advice he got to send them to Marblealan is very very good.

The colors look very close to snowflake obsidian. But a reversed pattern from what I'm used to seeing. (used to white splotches on black. This is more like black splotches in white.)

Goshdarnit. I thought I had the auction pix of the two I bought. If I do, I'm not sure where I put 'em. Hmmm ... with the sparkle, they might look cool under a scanner. I oughta try that. In the meantime, here's a pair Alan B sold with what was described as "blue goldstone" but pretty sure it's poiple.

Too too fun!!!!

Oh yes, I got the bag in the mail today. And it is delicate. No ... it looks delicate. It is old. A little more sturdy than it looks. But it does look old. Cloudy thin plastic bag. Not brittle. One of the mibs looks clear, not a cat eye, or else the vanes are super skinny. (I don't see vanes.) An interesting variety of vane structures in the rest. Some a little banana-y. I think maybe all 4-vaners, technically, but some lie in a single plane. One definite 4-vaner has vanes with sharp edges, yet the vanes manage to look inflated, like the dried pod of a plant I used to be familiar with. Some of the base glass is aqua. Or else that's a lot of reflection off of aqua cores. Might be bottle green in the base of some but some of the bases are clear, at least distinctly more clear in comparison with the aquas. I'm gonna have to study this slowly. This is one bag I won't be opening so I need to study it carefully to understand the vanes.

Cool beans!

I'd say yes. Who can be sure about the date but 50's and 60's is the range generally given for 4-vane single-colored cats. Umm, actually, I think I see 50's given as the date on 4-vaners more often than 60's, but yeah, 60's sounds okay.

That weird gloopy mish mashy thing which Jabos sometimes do is why I thought the invention of a name like "floater" was a good idea. It's great for cases such as ones where one cannot easily tell whether a mib is an opaque ribbon in a transparent base or a transparent ribbon in an opaque base. But I can see the name reaching out to encompass the distinct transparent swirls on the one end of the spectrum and the more patchy transparent-based mibs on the other side of the spectrum. Sure it would be somewhat redundant that way. But it would be natural, and we can deal with overlapping names. We're smart. It's a cool word. It deserves breathing room to find its niche. One corollary question is whether it would apply to non-jabos. For example, there are some sorta nebulous gloopy Champs floating around. (pun intended) . Could they be called 'floaters'? would that be a good thing? an okay thing? a confusing thing? a downright bad thing? Something which could suppress adoption is if the originator or early adopters are very proprietary with it. It could be frustrating for them if it morphs into something other than what they intended. But if they keep too tight rein on it, they could strangle it and there might be no more adopters. The evolution of language is tricky. If it is just about Jabos, then the early adopters can maintain more control of the word. If it's considered a candidate for adoption in the wider marble world, then more people have an interest in whether or not it gets used and how it is used. There are different criteria for language adoption and most are not "rational". Expression is a gut level phenomenon. It'll be fun to see how much traction "floater" has over time. Reminds me of ... what is that one ... oh yeah, Vitro Opals. A cool collector name which stuck ... but I get the idea that most of us are not using the name exactly how it was originally applied -- matching up in some of the cases but not all ....... I don't know quite what to think about it. The people who coined it don't seem to argue a lot about names, at least not in my hearing. But where does that leave the name? Just stick it on the most obvious cases? but what about when people do want to stretch it in what seems a logical way, a way which might actually be consistent with the coiners' intention but isn't what 90% of the users picture when they say "Opal" .... what then? I don't know.

except at first, coz at first there's a crispy icy layer on the ice cream. I love that part. :Cartoon_177:

LOL. gloop gloop. (my impression of the ice cream in a rootbeer float)

neat ! and wild ;-)

Well, I know historically when and why marbles were sold. At least part of the time and part of the reason. I don't know how it started. It might have been a demand for marbles ... or for novelty. But in the mid-40's, it was the opposite: a shortage of gumballs rather than a need for more marbles. During WWII sugar was in short supply, gum bases which had been imported were no longer available, and people were stressed out and were chewing more gum ... until it was gone. A 1942 article said about people chewing more because of stress and strain, but before long you just couldn't get gum. I think in the early 40's some gum machines might have been physically converted to allow them to dispense marbles. In the mid-40's some vending machines were made more versatile out of the box. Nothing I saw in ads gave me the impression that these would have been permanenty designated for the sale of marbles. Marbles were one option in a changing marketplace. But I only came to this planet in 1962, and didn't pay attention to gumball machines until I had been here for many years. ;-) Here is an ad from 1946: (click to enlarge) There was an ad from earlier in the 1940's which mentioned a "cherry red" marble as a prize marble. Could those have been Flinties? No brand was given in that ad so that doesn't answer about Akro branded stickers being on vending machines, but it's sorta interesting. I think maybe I better gather up all 'my' ads and see what I have. I have another project I need to finish this week. Maybe I'll clip out ads for breaks.

How cool is this box?!!!! From the seller's description: (click to enlarge)

A follow-up to this thread, Cat Eye's With Holes On The Vane .... For the record, one day recently I had my cat's eyes out and I found my very most bubbly one which definitely had holes through the vanes not just reflective disks resting on them. It's a four-vane green cat. All four vanes have bubbles, staggered lines of bubbles. The whole effect reminds me of a fern. I looked further. I found many many cat's eyes with bubbles in the vanes. Some had what looked like bubbles on the surface but almost invariably there was at least a thin-ness in the vane 'under' the bubble. The otherwise solid vanes looked translucent there. And many had bubbles all the way through. At first I imagined all the holes came from bubbles in the base glass which shoved their way through the vanes. But if baseglass could have bubbles, why couldn't vane glass? Now I think it did sometimes. Bottom line: I have cat's eyes with distinct holes in the vanes. Seems a lot more common than I expected when Ness started her thread in February. Not a lot of standouts, but many clearly visible when I'm on the lookout for them.

Possibly interesting question: What are/would be/might be the differences between floaters and transparent swirls? I have an opinion on the matter, natch, but would like to hear what others think.

Gary, sounds like a good point about wear on the labels. PlanB, I was under the impression that the ones which said "marbles" were fakes, at least the ones with the word etched into the glass. Real machines, possibly from the 40's to 60's, but the word "marbles" was added later -- is what I've heard. This one caught my eye because it didn't have the etching. Are you aware of any of them which said marbles in etching or decal form or whatever while they were actually dispensing marbles?

there would be liability issues.

Haven't heard of Vitro stock boxes from that era being marked. This is another mere hunch but I'm guessing that perhaps none were. at least not in the 30's. I'm thinking that if they had been marked -- or if many had been marked -- more might have been preserved and info about the style name "tri-lite" might have surfaced earlier in modern times. not to mention the names "du-lite" and "clear-lite". As I said, that's only a hunch. Don't take it to the bank just yet. Maybe someone else will confirm or correct.

Well, he would have meant Akro Tri-Colors. But Akro marked their boxes, like so: Pretty sure this is a Vitro Tri-Lite stock box. I.e., Vienna Vitros. I haven't been keeping all that close a look at box prices. Mostly I window shop and don't check the price tags. lol. but Vitro boxes don't come up anywhere near as often as Akro, and looking at the contents and measuring how fast my pulse is racing, I just have the idea that it would have gone higher if it had been i.d.-ed as Vitro.

What do we think about this one? Anyone seen this type of labeling back in the day, or aware of it as a modern trend? The seller doesn't say their location. Just "collection nation". Simpler than the usual etched ones. Almost makes it possibly almost maybe convincing sorta could be possibly I don't know what do you think? Same seller also sold a Beatles one recently:

This use has been stated before, but I've never seen anything like this set before. Set of 4 Large Antique 1 5/8 Swirl Marble Castors :Emoticon-jawdrop: LOL ... I'd been good about not looking at general ebay listings until just now when that box o' boxes Bo posted sent me off the wagon.

Oops, it looks like a friendly ebayer misled this seller. Just a hunch but I bet he coulda gotten more for this if it had been accurately listed. http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...em=170329177104 wowowowowowow

LOL Ain't they just! It's so fun to have two little ones together! They're a laugh riot. Almost makes me want more. I think I better go hug my 9-year-old bebbes now before I start having unfaithful thoughts! p.s. I suppose we could bear to look at a few dogs too ... if any are brave enough to show their mugs .... Speaking of bears .... it's bear foot weather you know .....