Steph

well, I thought I was done with the cosmics but I didn't see your response, PlanB. Are you saying they were Anacortes mibs after all? I'm confused now. edit: I'm even more confused now, I just read some more in AMMM and they seem to contradict the date they gave for when Paris was making marbles. Looks like that continued through much of 1987. Plus they seem to give two different dates for the move to Anacortes. I give. One day I'll get it straight. By the way, I found a newspaper interview of a Vitro manager, John Masters, who doesn't seem to be mentioned in AMMM. Was "manager" different from "plant manager"? I still have plenty to sort out, I guess.

Now that I'm done with my part of the cosmic research I'll say what I should've said awhile back -- those aventurine bananas are sharp! hmmm ... while i'm in the neighborhood catching up ... the wirepull colors seem like the vacor wicked owl. how sure are you of it being european?

Here's my St. Mary's:

could be two beautiful Akros. :-)

Yeah, that makes sense ... either way ... odd glimpses of the neighboring marbles and/or some enhancement by the artist. Makes me want to fill a pitcher with clearies and then stare at it for awhile to see what I notice that I hadn't expected, like clouds.

I think these are the ones AMMM calls "Mystery Marbles II". AMMM says those have been found in 5/8" and 7/8".

I made inquiries. :-) A couple of people contributed to the verdict, which is that Cosmic Rainbows are not Gladding Vitro, and thus were not made between 1969 and 1982, nor before 1969. Paris Mfg bought Gladding Vitro in 1982, and changed the name back to Vitro Agate. According to AMMM, Paris made mibs from 1982 to 1985. So, how about an estimate of 24 to 27 years?

The glass looks like Japanese "transitionals" from the 30's or so. However, at LOM the votes so far are for it being an early German marble. To me the pontil looks like a cleaned up version of the pontils on some marbles which were dug in Shanghai. Most of the unpolished ones have odd crimps, with a spot in the middle which looks like the glass broke off there. But there were other mibs from the dump, not slag-types, which did look like at attempt might have been made to smooth the end. I don't know how to go about framing the suggestion that this might be from Shanghai. I haven't seen enough German pontils to know how similar they would be to the ones from the Shanghai dumpsite. This is the first ground pontil I've seen in person. Plus, the Shanghai mibs I've seen had reverse 9's. But it sure is intriguing to me to think that the ones in the dumpsite might have been rejected before the pontil grinding stage, while this one made it all the way through and out into the world. a few Shanghai examples:

In terms of minerals there is something called moonstone which is different from Akro's moonie glass. Akro advertisements described Moss Agates as being made of the "highest quality moonstone glass". Naturally that did not mean Moss Agates had the same base as Akro moonies. Seems a good chance that moonstone was the material used to make the 1800's version of moonies. Main point for this thread ... and why I separated it from the other snot agate thread ... was that these marbles pre-date Akro and Christensen. So what snot agate referred to this year might be very different from what it referred to in the 30's. And I wonder what that was.

Deleted. Edna, I thank you for defending me in the past when I could not defend myself. I guess I'll be responsible for my own defense from now on. And that's okay with me. I'm a big girl.

Thanks David. One source defines "snot agate" as an agate with a veined and clouded interior. (and "snotty" is short form for snot-agate). I think that simply a mossy interior might have earned the name moonie. What I wonder is whether in 1914 the snot agate would have referred to a stone marble or glass. Not many choices it seems if it was glass, but I don't know enough about minerals and real agates to guess which stone might have been involved.

Edna, I presume you are speaking of me. I have a legitimate desire to protect the old standards for words such as oxblood. Akin to the line Sue draws with the name Joseph's Coat. It is not nitpicking or bullheaded to draw a meaningful line and defend it. This is about marbles. It is a legitimate topic. If there are improper (read: personal) overtones here, they are not of my making.

Nevertheless the transparent oxblood to which I referred was copper-based. Anyone has the right to call things most anything they want. However, the rest of us have a right to do what we can to warn the unsuspecting of how some people use words in a nontraditional way. Red flags go off when people do this often, and/or without making it clear that this is what they are doing. We have the right to advise newbies that it is safest to steer clear of people who seem to be doing this, and in particular to guard against spending traditional oxblood money on non-traditional "oxblood" glass. Oxblood prices are rightly associated with Haematinum red glass. When people seem to be riding the coat tails of Haematinum's market success, their reputation suffers. I'd hate to see that happen to anyone I know.

Mostly Chinese, I believe. Imperial is a company which was formed well after Akro went out of business. They distribute toys made elsewhere. Their suppliers have been known to included U.S. makers in the past and other countries, including different Asian countries. But most famously they buy from China.

just don't worry about it.

Hong Kong started making cat's eyes in 1954. This is significantly earlier than I believe "we" previously knew. Prior to that they had imported marbles, mostly from Japan, and then re-exported them to commonwealth countries. They seem to have faced some issues with "Certificate of Origin" and "Imperial Preference" rules, and their client countries had expressed much interest in Hongkong-made marbles, so they went for it. The first factory was built in 1954. It was called the Hongkong Marble Glass Manufactory. The 3rd factory had been built in or by 1956. Though one of the 3 had closed in/by 1956 due at least partly to issues with the seasonal nature of marbles, at least one was operating at full capacity with a backlog of orders. One of the factories made over a million marbles a day, using what appears to have been 10 machines. They were cat's eyes and clays, 14mm and 17mm. Larger sizes were planned for the near future. I didn't actually see the term cat's eye -- they were described as "transparent marbles with colour-core". The industry faced challenges but they maintained, and time appears to have confirmed, that prospects still looked very good. One of the challenges was getting production costs low enough to help them compete with Japan. One of the strategies they were looking into was managing the supply of glass. I think they were talking about scrap glass. Marbles appear to have been made for both play and industry. This is all to the best of my ability to piece together info from google fragments. My source info is mainly "The Glass Marble Industry of Hongkong", in the Far Eastern Economic Review, published by Review Pub. Co. Ltd. Another item to put on my library checklist.

A 1935 definition of Snot Agate calls it "a glass agate of any color streaked with white". (source) In 1932, you could buy a bag of 38 snot agates for 10 cents. If I understand correctly those are gobfed marble prices, and thus the marbles would not have been Christensens. The 38 marbles in a bag makes me wonder if these could have been marbles jobbered by Rosenthal. Why? Because the other time I remember seeing a bag with 38 marbles in it was Berry Pink's double compartment bag. And then that makes me wonder if the marbles might have been made by Alley. With Berry being an executive with both Alley and Rosenthal in 1932 and with Alley not selling his own branded bags, I wonder if Berry might have distributed the marbles through Rosenthal? Does anyone know?

What would snotties have looked like in 1914? Any ideas? (click to enlarge)

Oxblood as a color is the color of ox blood. Sometimes wet ox blood. Sometimes dry. To widen that meaning -- as a color -- is anyone's prerogative, and it is anyone's prerogative not to adopt the expanded definition. I know that I am more of a purist than most so I shall proceed with caution in that area. I see what appears to be an effort to expand the definition by fiat instead of in an organic way and I resist that. Oxblood is an archaic term. I choose to appreciate it in its traditional contexts, as far as I understand them. My understanding of that is still in progress.

By the way, it turns out that at least some of the copper-based glass called oxblood in the 1800's and early 1900's wasn't opaque. This isn't any reason to throw out all our past definitions, but it's interesting all the same. Glass chemists of the day treated the subject in a scientific way. Artisans and art lovers studied it also. Definitely no reason to haggle about the subject before we study in depth what the people who gave us the word knew.

I do not know who said that. It was not I.

In this discussion, a certain amount of precision about the context would be a good idea. Otherwise we could easily blur the terms until they are practically meaningless. Oxblood as a color will be dark red. Oxblood as a copper-based reddish glass might be generalized to other shades in a modern discussion. However, one thing I learned from my reading is that the people who regularly used the term oxblood in the 1800's and early 1900's would have known the literal color of oxblood. Other shades had other names. Humans lived in multi-species communities. Animals were their servants and direct food sources. People were quite intimate with facts about their animals, down to the level of knowing different animals had different shades of blood.

Yellow swirls in clear make me think of Champ (or vacor, tho' that's not really on my mind here). I haven't really spent much time thinking about yellow tho' so I don't know who else might've done it. In particular I don't know if that is a CAC option.

Those would be the six-vane type I don't like to get too specific with. I'd just guess Asia in general. And I'd guess "after 1970", again without wanting to be commit further.

I really can't tell how many separate varieties are in the updated pic. I don't see the ketchup and mustard. And the top right one looks sort of like the far left one.