Steph

This Master ad is from Jan 1931. I've posted it before but at the time I didn't realize how very early that was in the company's history. According to AMMM, the company started making marbles in May 1930 and first shipped in Oct. 1930, yet the ad is written as if they have an established track record of sales. "Preferred above all others by the marble-shooting 'stars' of boydom". I love it! (click on link below the thumbnail) http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o151/modularforms/Master/Playthings_Jan1931_ShootingStars.jpg Next comes a Christensen ad ... unless someone beats me in with someone else first.

Wow, Brian, do you remember if that box contained moss agate type patches? I've edited the image of the article to give my best guess for how it was intended to read. I'm not at all sure about the "assortments of 100 marbles ... containing rich shades of red and yellow" part toward the bottom. And if I'm right about Mr. Morris Rosenthal there, then I had guessed the wrong Morris Rosenthal. (Lots of Morris Rosenthals to choose from.) I know I have given Berry Pink a bit of a hard time for his exaggerations, and I'll likely sound that way again as I keep sorting through his story -- he's so interesting! But whatever I say, I find it easy to believe he was proud of the job he did in promoting marbles and that he did it well. Promoting himself was clearly a part of how he did the job. This article from Playthings gives a sense of what middle men such as jobbers and salesmen could do to help maximize the potential of their clients on both ends of the transactions. They had good ideas for retailers. With packaging innovations and good advertising they could help lead the market and open a lot of doors for the manufacturers. On the other end they could give their suppliers good ideas based on feedback from many retailers, and of course from many consumers. Pink became known for his hands-on research -- giving marbles away for free involved letting kids choose the marbles they liked. The story is told that this is how he knew that red was always a winner. Maybe that's why Pelt had two "big value" style boxes. One for the assorted colors and one just for Bloodies. Does anyone reading this know? Would Pink deserve credit for the Bloodies boxes? Those 100 count boxes couldn't be that, could they? 1932 was way too early, right? (click to enlarge)

Cool. 20 marbles. I wonder if that's closer to the dimensions given in the article. BJ, you wouldn't happen to remember the dimensions on yours? :-) Approximating the ratio of length to width I got a factor of 2.42 using the article's dimensions. Using pixel count, I got 2.52 on the Rosenthal box and 2.22 on the Rich box. By odd coincidence I got 2.52 on 2 different Rosenthal boxes. It's odd because you wouldn't expect two approximations to come out that close. Here's the other example I used. (click) (I do get about 2.4 on this view but the 2.52 came from a view with less distortion. lol.) ((Please someone save the day and tell us what the dimensions are for this style of Rosenthal box! ))

one more for tonight ... This company Millburn Mills, of Quidnick, RI, looked pretty serious. All 4 of these are from the June 1938 Playthings. But so far this one issue is the only place I've seen their name in connection wtih marbles. In a few years they'd be making first aid supplies for medics. Notice the "wide or narrow" mesh options. Marble bags did switch mesh sizes sometime in the 30's. Maybe those choices reflect the transition. Or maybe by wide Millburn Mills mean something super wide and it's not related at all. who knows.

Thought this was cool, even with the left side chopped off. The title might be, "Some Ideas in Marble Merchandising". (It looks like it should have some small word in front of the "Ideas".) There are definitely some other parts I wish I could see better, but for now --- (click to enlarge) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . For comparison (and some color) here's a Rosenthal box BJ sold. The story with it was that it was given to a boy at his 5th grade graduation in 1931. (4-vane cat a later addition of course) Sometimes the stories with the boxes are right! :-) That looks like a leatherette bag, no?, and the dimensions look like they could match. The marble count doesn't quite match but that wouldn't be the biggest typo I've seen in an old article this week. (click to enlarge) And here's the double-compartment mesh bag from Alan's auction. (click to enlarge a little) . . . . . . . . . . . .

Update: The June 1938 Playthings Magazine has a feature piece on Gene Byrnes, the Reg'lar Fellers cartoonist. He is launching a series of tie-ins and spin-offs of his newspaper comic. "Many interesting tie-ups in the toy field are now in preparation and, according to Mr. Lindner, will be shortly announced," they said. Mr. Linder had been the director of promotion for the 1939 World's Fair. 1939 would be a perfect date for the box. With the advertising already in full swing in 1938, the intent had to be to have the toys ready for the fair. Postwar is pretty much out of the question. I doubt the Reg'lar Fellers toy promotion survived the war. It would be well over 10 years from 1938 to the time when Japan would get back to importing toys under the label "made in Japan". I think that gives us grounds for a date estimate on the mushroom mibs -- late 30's, give or take.

I wondered if that was it. Having a showroom in 1950 didn't fit though. Turns out that 200 Fifth Avenue is "famous" -- to the right people I guess. Some sort of toy expo center I gather. Seems that it might have been evolving into something major in the 30's or 40's. No clue yet about how long people would have their showrooms for. Like for special toy events, or in season, or all year around.

No, I don't really have a candidate yet. This ad from March 1946 is the latest I've seen so far with box photos. But check out the "counter box" photo. That moss agate pic was first used about 15 years before. (click to enlarge) This March 1950 ad is the latest of any sort I've seen for them so far -- not counting the one for the sale of the property. What do we know about the Akro showroom in New York? Oh, I see they mentioned a showroom in a 1938 ad also, different room number.

Yup, still amazing on day 2! no, seriously, Carole, that's a fantastic piece.

Isn't it an early German marble? With the faceted pontil? I mean, it's not really a Leighton, is it? as in not really from a Leighton site?

December 27, 1925 brings news of a good year in Huntington Park. Calif. Agate has recently doubled their number of employees and added new machines. Though retailers sell marbles mostly in the spring and summer, the factory is making them year round. They find a growing demand for their products, which are now marbles, onyx radiator caps* and gear-shift balls -- marbles mostly east of the Mississippi, the other items mostly in Southern California. *I think that would have been knobbed ornaments, not the actual radiator cap.

bit of advice for anyone who follows up on these or other LA Times leads: be flexible with keywords to make allowances for possible errors. The paper had several inconsistencies in details. Here's what I learned today. The California Agate Company was founded by three men. Their names may have been, G. D. Mitchell, T. D. Meagher and G. W. McElroy, as reported on December 7, 1924. A July 27, 1924 article gives Mr. Meagher's initials as M. T. Meagher was the president of the company in 1924. He may have been the driving force of the company in the beginning. The December article reports that Mitchell had moved his family to Los Angeles about 3 years before. He was recovering from being gassed in the war, and looking for a job. That's when he met Meagher, a travelling salesman. I assume Mitchell was already a marble cutter. Meagher had seen how the shortage of German agates had affected kids during the war. He saw a demand they might supply. Mitchell made a trip to Mexico where he assured himself of the quality and quantity of the stone they could use, and made arrangements to have it shipped by sea. It was often colorful, was in virtually unlimited supply, and was found relatively nearby. The latter was one advantage over Germany, who was said to be using agate imported from South America, and specifically Brazil. (The Brazilian agate seems to have been easier to color than German agate.) McElroy was an inventor and helped set up the marble making machinery. With little capital, their first "factory" was a shed in Los Angeles. They were successful from the start, perhaps with an international customer list. And in 1924 they moved to the somewhat larger factory in Huntington Park. The July article said their new home would be a "sheet iron building", 34 x 100 (feet? yards?), built by H. A. Kembel at a cost of $1500. Their line is given as "marbles, beads and various agate and onyx novelties". They expect to employee about 15 people. They will get to work at full capacity as soon as possible because their orders are piling up. In December Meagher says their output is 6000 marbles a day, and they are "the only firm in America competing with German for the toy-stone marble trade." Their original Los Angeles address was given in the July article as 1511 Temple St. Their Huntington Park address was said to be 204 N. Regent St. Later sources said 304 N. Regent St. N. Regent St. doesn't appear to exist anymore. There does appear to be a 1511 West Temple St. in LA The realtor references in the LA Times may all have been coincidental, neighboring articles to stories about Calif. Agate. That is the case for at least one of the references. But there is still the reference to realty in the Who's Who article, so maybe there will still turn out to be another partner in a few years. Or maybe someone's name is misspelled in the articles I've found so far.

Frank Mitchell's story made it all the way to New Zealand. The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 8, Issue 3 (July 1, 1933), Tons of Marbles

So, is it too late to get the papers to print a retraction? Looks like something is off in the caption on the photo in the original post. No wonder I had no luck finding Frankie Walker anywhere. This is the pic as it showed up in the Fresno Bee on Feb. 14, 1932: (click to enlarge) This is a slightly different pic, but same setting. And there's Frankie Mitchell, digging in his aggies in Popular Science, April 1932 (click to enlarge)

Here's the article I most want to see, an LA times story from 1924: It's a pay article though and I reported my Visa card missing last week. I have to wait for the new card to arrive before I can access the article! I've never been good at waiting! Here's the abstract: That's the new name I have, G. D. Mitchell. I'm pretty sure he's not the realtor. A few society type articles about yachting come up with my more carefully targeted keyword searches. Don't know what to make of those. Plus some business-oriented articles from 1923. My hope/guess is that is when the Calif. Agate Co. started or maybe expanded. Did I mention how much I hate waiting!

They were made for playing with. Kids liked them in the 20's. Cat's eyes were hot in the 50's. Clearies were even popular enough at one time to constitute a fad. Southwestern onyx was considered cool in the 20's. The colors were fresh. Different from what everyone had grown accustomed to. In 1923 in Lincoln Nebraska they were important enough for a "5c to 50c" store to advertise that they had just received a shipment. The next week their ad contained the price -- 20 cents.

HustlerPress-file1.pdf

Actually, I definitely have another name of someone making agate marbles in the U.S. at about the right time. I just have to wait to find out for sure if he's connected with the California Agate company. I hate waiting!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! p.s., I also have an address for somebody else who sold agate marbles, this time in 1955, but I presume that was just a hobby type operation. Anyone heard of Deslie's in Palm Springs?

Oh yes, the Calif. Agate Co. was one of many onyx factories or workshops in southern California. And there were other factories in other states. Onyx "novelties" were very popular and I gather that the Mexican onyx was considered special at the time, maybe especially the pink. Onyx gear shift knobs amounted to a fad in the 20's. There is a 1926 report that Calif. Agate donated a gear shift knob, a box of 25 agates and "a piece of rough onyx with one corner polished" to the U.S. National Museum. Does that mean they should be somewhere in the catacombs at the Smithsonian? Other round novelties Calif. Agate appears to have made are door knobs. Maybe umbrella heads, but not sure. In 1929, they had some sort of dispute with the treasury department in connection with rough onyx. Seems they lost their case. They protested. A rehearing was denied, but they apparently still lasted into the 30's. R. W. Walker may not have been the first or primary person connected with the company. The leads I still have to follow seem likely to give me one or two other names.

What a tease! I found a California Agate Company reference in the 1928-29 Who's Who in California. It gives the fella's address, tells me what club he belongs to, lets me know he was a realtor, and chops off his name! (click to enlarge) That did give me some other leads though. Update may be coming soon.

Ever? About half the favorites boxes I've seen had swirls. Would like evidence one way or the other for whether that was "right". Onyx. Presumably pelts. [edit: says "onyx" but but I don't think that meant "slag" to the ad writer] Maybe in 1933 the muslin bag would have been filled with Alleys. I do wonder how Alley's swirls were distributed before his Pressman days.

The box was at the 2005 IAMC show. If someone said it was empty then, that would settle the issue of backfilling. lol It still appears to be a Christensen box with an Albright label. And we still have clays and Chrissies being sold together. Cool, there's an ad on p. 73 of AMMM which shows them being sold that way. And now I see that AMMM says that Albright distributed Christensens. On the other hand, it says that Albright sold mostly stock boxes of slags, and clays of course. I'm not totally ruling out WV swirl options, but there's obviously some connection between Albright and CA. Have to wonder how far it goes. The WV options are limited. Only 2 if we're talking swirls.

FYI, there's a Berry Pink article in a 1937 American Magazine. Alas, the text isn't available at Google Books.

1921 The American Magazine, Vol XCII, the issues from July 1921 to December 1921. The article, Did You Ever Buy a Toy for a Child?, by Sophia Delavan naturally mentions marbles. It's not a big mention, but it's an excuse to post an old magazine with nice graphics. It starts on page 41 of the December issue. The text is sorta hard to navigate, or was for me, because there is more than one page 41. I couldn't get to the last one in the normal way. Here are some direct links. Beginning of the December issue First page of the toy article, p. 41 Continuation of article, on p. 129 The marble mention is on p. 130. It gives an explanation of "reelers", and gives a price. Uses the term "tiger eye" in a new way for me.

Changed name from Industrial Window Glass Co. to West Fork Glass Co. on June 30, 1905. (Industrial Window Glass started at least by 1901) Made window glass. Anything else? I don't know.