Steph

Well, that sounds like what I usually hear. But has anyone here ever seen one with that kind of marble in it? Tonight I've seen pix of what appear to be five Ringer Marble Sets. (I suppose they could be come of the same boxes but with the marbles switched out. ;-). Two of the boxes contain popeyes and three have mibs which seem somewhere between cloudy and mossy. If a box was ever full of the marble Scott singled out, then that would be weird to me. It's not a known type. So is there a missing Akro name? Or was there a run of error popeyes one day which were sent out in Ringer Marble Sets? If they came in different colors, that wouldn't seem so much like an error. So that'd be weird. That's a good start. I like that together with, "And looks like it matches the known Ace examples". There's "something" about the texture of the base which stands out. I think it has a grain. Maybe not as conspicuous in general as the grain in Realers is famous for being, but the glass doesn't seem as smoothly blended as a lot of other Akros, translucent, white or otherwise. Also, with a marble as misunderstood as this one, I'd want to be very careful not to overgeneralize. I'd stick close to the known examples for awhile. On the other hand, if I'm holding a cork which has obvious fire in the base, I'm going to consider it nice enough to set apart, whether it is an "Ace" or not. Came in both cork and patch, and what seems to be a swirl. I'm not sure at the moment if the swirl is essentially a crazy cork or if it's more truly random. There are other colors of base. No need for whisps or white though, yeah, the cork/swirl version does generally seem to have greater numbers of colors per marble than the patch version. The patch version is what you are already familiar with. That's the trouble with definitions. We define ourselves out of accurate i.d.'s. We could end up saying the person who made the marble originally got the name wrong. But some other marble made 10 years after the real ones qualifies by sheer coincidence. Yes, slags were called Striped Onyx. The red ones could be sold in the Striped Onyx box or in Cardinal Red boxes. Then when Akro stopped making slags they kept the Onyx name for the corks made with white ribbons in transparent colored glass. The Cardinal Red name also survived the switch, but I get the impression it was discontinued before the onyx name -- maybe when they ran out of cardinal red boxes? (she asks half seriously) Tri-colors don't have to be on a white base. Do you see that Lifesaver in Dani's catalog pic? What modern collectors call "Specials" were Tri-Colors to Akro. Yes, they came in both cork and patch. The Prize Name description on the left up there didn't come with the picture on the right. Sorry I wasn't clear enough about that. The description had the original colors. The picture was evidence of the expanded line. Mainly I wanted to show that there were eventually white based Prize Names and that those were different from Aces. I think the description which came with the picture just said "two colors", with no specifics. Unfortunately the only copy I could find today was teeny tiny and pretty much illegible. If that's the copy I originally read, my eyes were much better then than they are now. Akro did have many booboos in their ads though. The people who did the ads probably weren't Akro people. The ads are nice looking, very professional. I think some ad guy(s) at an agency may have had some sample boxes and a stack of old ads to use for source material. Maybe a few notes from Akro people. Maybe not so many samples and/or notes. Have you seen the Sparkler description?

Oh hey, you broke the picture up. I liked them all together. No, I didn't mean that. :-) That was sort of a heads up about the possibility of confusing Vacors with Japanese 6-vanes. But mostly I was admiring Vacors. They're nice ! I'm too worried about which are old and which are new. Elizabeth / Pinx posted some examples of Mexican cats which could pass for Japanese. I'll try to get the link. Here's a pretty good example of the early Japanese I like. Just bright solid colors. Healthy stimulation for the retinas. Fills 'em up without overloading. :-)

I like one type not represented in yours -- what I believe are the earliest Japanese cat's eyes. Simple design but vivid colors. Some of the Vacor cats look way way too much like Japanese 6-vanes. (As you say, they're nice.)

Pretty group!

LOL Carole, more than that, it made me go nova.

Here's a conveniently dated Marble King box. :-) (click) A thread with other modern patches. (and some vintage ones)

Here's a thread where I tried to think about something sort of like that. Non Vitro " All Reds " If I saw red and red, in the pattern of a modern rainbow, I'd likely think modern MK. Or possibly foreign. Here's a conveniently dated Marble King box. :-)

D@MM I mean WOW SIZZZZZZLE I haven't had time to read everything these last few days. Glad I opened this one ! ! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Torched. is my guess.

How do I answer that? All I can think is to post this again, a little bigger. That is Akro's catalog. Prize Name and Tri-Color are Akro's names. White with one color is a Prize Name. White with two colors is a Tri-Color. (So are other opaque bases with two colors in the ribbon(s), but that's another story.)

Check out this thread. I don't remember if it's "complete", but it's targeted to your question. Japanese Cat's Eye?, USA cat's eye?

The marble at the first link for sure Moss Agate. But Ringer is a collector's name which Akro didn't assign to any other marble, so if someone wants to use it for some particular type of marble who'm I to argue. Don't get me wrong, I'm curious about what name they might have been sold under, and really don't have a good idea on that. This version from Uncmikie which Scott pointed out here, the one which looks so much like a Tri-Onyx Agate. What would it have been sold as? Was it an error pop? Was it made on purpose? What was its name to Akro? Yeah, I'm curious about that, but even when we find out, it wouldn't interfere with calling the marble a ringer, since it doesn't conflict with any of Akro's own names. Now, some of your "ordinary" white-based corks might turn out to be aces. Not all though and I think not most. I'd first check whichever ones you have in the 5 classic Ace colors. There are large versions here. If Akro ever did extend the Aces beyond the first five colors, the base from the original ones would help to identify the others. The truly ordinary white bases would be Prize Names. White wasn't included in the initial color offering but the line was quickly extended. (click for some enlargement) Comparing Akro's descriptions to their marbles gives some insight into terminology of the day, how loose it might have been, or simply how different from what we say today. Akro said the Prize Names were opaque but I believe that some which were sold as Prize Names were slightly translucent. And their ribbons could even be transparent. The overall effect though ... for most Prize Names ... would generally have been that light didn't penetrate in any particularly interesting way. The Aces are different, in part because they have what Akro called opalescence. (I know you don't like how they used the word but that's what they called it.) Trying to sort the red/white prize names from the red "Aces" would need some care. The red ribbons on the barely translucent prize names can give the marble an orange glow when backlit. I still wonder which came first, the Ace or Pelt's Acme Realer. They can be so similar that I think one might have been a response to the popularity of the other. (click to enlarge) So ... is there any known advetisement for the Ringer Marble Set?

I guess there might be some champs in the bag. Many are not. It's been backfilled. This thread gives some insight: Hurry, Hurry, Hurry,. Al mentions the guy in Florida who was in the business of selling backfilled and totally fantasy bags in the 1990's. I got some from someone in Florida about 5 years ago. May have been the same guy. I think one of the Champ bags I got from him might actually have had champs in it. But I still think it was backfilled. It was full of teeny amber clearies. That could make sense for Champ since the last time I saw teeny clearies they were in a bicentennial bag which I got for Christmas in 1976. But all the same color? That doesn't sound right. Sounds more like someone who bought factory surplus.

DANG! !!

On the last three occasions I remember discussing the Ace vs. Moss issue, you said I lost you, Kevin quit speaking to me and Brian's head started hurting. Are you sure you don't want to retract your question? :Sad_headshake_tweetz: Okay then. Ace and moss are two different animals. Yes, to the best of my knowledge, the Blue Eggyolk was a moss agate to Akro. Ringer, nuh uh, not going there tonight! Here are Akro's descriptions of their moss and ace agates. This is going to hurt someone's head too. I editorialized some but I tried to let Akro speak for itself. There are a couple of things in Akro's descriptions of Moss Agates and Aces that I don't remember us discussing before. The "pattern" of moss agates and the size of aces.

AMMM said that at their time of peak production they had 6 or 7 machines in operation. In spite of a success enough to supposedly merit an expansion of the facilities in 1946, I imagine that whatever was reported before the the war would be close to peak. Also, 120 sounds like a figure which would might have come from multiplying the estimated output for a single machine by 6. 20 marbles a minute per machine? Sounds like a figure we ought to be able to confirm somehow. But I'm not sure where to look at the moment. It could even be in the Akro chapter of AMMM. I need to read that chapter thoroughly soonish. Love that book but the fine print means it's not all that skimmable. :-) Note: In 1903, Martin Christensen's machines could already make about 10 marbles per minute. (apiece)

If he restored German cars they'd be VW swirls. :icon_lmao: :rol:

It's a Moss Agate box. Many do appear to be "Ades" -- of course many moss agates fluoresce. Box wouldn't say Aces tho' -- that's the Akro name we talked about a coupla months ago, the one collectors have borrowed and put on the moss agates corks.

or did I miss something? that modern marble king box went for $175. Was it really a "salesman's box"? if so, would that explain such a high price for modern MKs?

Did Morphy used to be better at ID-ing their mibs than they were this time? I didn't check all the auctions -- for instance I didn't check handmades -- but I did see some serious faux pas in a few of the more common marble auctions. I need to compare the final prices with the estimates. Coz it seemed like too many boxes were estimated at about $200. ... with modern marble kings estimated higher than most.

I'm still unclear on when Yellow Jackets were made. For at least part of their life they were made concurrently with All-Reds, yet were made only a "short" time (whatever that means exactly). The ratio of blackline all-reds to yellow-jackets is very high. One figure I heard was 25 to 1. So it seems that this might put the Yellow Jackets in the year 1959, plus or minus a "short" time.

These are an inch. That's where I'd put it without better evidence on which to base a different decision. you already know or can likely guess what the name on this box is.

Carole "tosses" pelt comics -- at least one of them! !! Are those in your office? Makes one wonder how many are sitting at home.

I would guess not a ringer. Serious question: were Ringer boxes ever 1 inch deep?

1941 West Virginia: A Guide to the Mountain State By Federal Writers' Project, 1941 http://books.google.com/books?id=Q3n11Tg9kDoC&pg=PA215 Surprisingly little about marbles actually. There's a Libby Owens Ford / Vitrolite mention, but nothing about Vitro, Ravenswood, Alley, .... The only marbles reference I found was this about Akro, and a related one 5 pages earlier: