Steph

So Kevin ... do you have a guess on the mystery mib? LOL ... any Kevin can answer.

Heaton Big Shot Cat Eyes, from Joeager's auction. Only 5 cents! (click to enlarge) These cat's eyes were said to be found in a bag, but the bag was damaged so the marbles were take out of it. I believe that the Ricksmarbles listing said/implied they were found at a Heaton site.

This is overkill, since we already know they were called Marble King marbles by 1940. But it's still cool! May 6, 1943 -- a big bag of Marble King marbles for free. And here is a 1938 ad for marbles with Rippled Wheat. Doesn't identify whose marbles but we have a good guess!

Would Jim King say dug if it weren't? His auction: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...em=360116026194

Al, it messed with my head for those to be Akros. Then I opened the thumbnail and realized they were MKs and felt better. A couple more boxes, one with Pelts and one with MKs. The 2nd box was sold by Morphy, who described the set as "Marble King Marbles with Original Box & Bag" but how could Morphy know they were original? and why are there so many marbles in the box?! (box #1 posted by nickybox) My guess is that more of those boxes originally came with Pelts than with MK patch and ribbon style rainbows. Further I think it's possible that none were marketed with MK rainbows in them. Berry Pink was pushing "Marble King marbles" long before there was a Marble King company. There is a photo of him in Issue #13 (Nov. 2005) of the WVMCC newsletter. It's from about 1940, taken in conjunction with the 1939-1940 New York World's Fair. He is standing with Jack Dempsey and Jim Braddock at a table full of Marble King mesh bags. The caption to the photo twice calls them "MARBLE KING marbles". Once when it talks about promotional materials which will come with packages of MARBLE KING marbles. And once when it says the two fighters are endorsing MARBLE KING marbles. (The caps were in the caption to the photo -- I'm not yelling. ) The 1954 catalog sheet shown on p. 105 of AMMM seems to be saying that the "Marble King" line goes back to 1929. It says "Featured for the past 25 years by leading jobbers." I don't necessarily believe there was Marble King labelling in 1929 but the Sunshine Rippled Wheat bags with this header seem to go back to the 30's. (marblealan) And then note that the 1954 ad shows Alley swirls in poly bags, and the only box shown is a Big Value Marble Assortment. with swirls. There's a Marble King "boy" on the ad but he's very cartoonish. Different from the boy we see on the boxes in this thread. Sourlis elsewhere shows a similar ad from 1953. Again, with Alley swirls in plastic bags. Finally, Rainbows started being made in 1956 or 57. And though the tournament bags from that time frame have a crouching marble player on them, he is wearing different clothes from the boy on these boxes. (sources: boxes, bag) My guess is that the box is from the 1940's, even the "Marble King marbles" version of it. And I'm not sure I'd buy leftover versions of it being used for Rainbows when by 1956 Berry Pink was obviously in the mood to update the boy's image. I suspect that any with Rainbows have been backfilled by people who for obvious reasons thought Marble Kings belonged in them.

Here's an Alley pistachio and .... ? I don't know what but Alley wouldn't be my first guess. Yet they look almost identical .... in a way. lol . . . Their ribbon pattern is very much alike. The triangular loop in front and then a stalk below it and two arms branching out of the stalk. The arms on the pistachio are different lengths. One is long and loops back toward the base of the marble. The arms on #2 are both long and reach around to the back of the marble where one folds over the other. They both have a little eye in back. But on mib #2 the eye is a little higher than on the pistachio, so it didn't show up automatically when I did the mostly 90 degree rotations for this series of pix. The odd pic on the top right is a pic of the eye. I borrowed it from another photo series. (click to enlarge) The mystery mib has quite a bit of color. At least orange and green and teal and white and clear. Here's another pic which might show colors better. Now I've misplaced the mib so I can't be more precise but take it for granted that my pix wash the colors out. . . . . . . . . . . I don't know why but I totally dig this ribbon pattern.

Champ (Darla's)

Would probably look Jabo to most. and yet it isn't.

Cairo novelty:

Some of the mistakes in the obituary would be him "acquiring" factories in Sistersville and Ottawa by 1922 -- when he was only 22. Berry Pink did have something to do with the Alley company shortly after Lawrence Alley started it, sometime around 1930. But supposedly Alley made his own marble machine and Pink wasn't listed as a partner on a 1930 deed for the Sistersville property used by "The Lawrence Glass Novelty Company" as it was officially known then. Pink had sort of a pretentious reputation in Sistersville. Stayed at a fancy hotel when he came in from New York and wouldn't drink the local water. And then he seems to have left under a legal cloud, something about problems with a marble packaging machine. He had a relationship with the Peltier company in Ottawa in the 1930's, but in 1922? One might think the 1922 date is simply a typo, except that it is coupled with the implication that a marble-making machine "perfected" by Pink was responsible for replacing clay marbles in the marketplace. While there may be something to explore about the relative expense of clays and glass marbles and what role Berry Pink might have had in promoting glass marbles, glass marble making had already been automated by the first time Pink is on any well-known record as being involved with the marble industry. Will he someday be revealed to have some role in, say, helping William Miller perfect his machine in the 20's? Or helping John Early work out the kinks in the Akro machinery? Or Howard Jenkins at Christensen Agate? Well, anyway, we know Pink was only 2 when Martin Christensen started it all rolling at MFC. There are other questionable points. Finishing at Princeton before starting his naval career ... at age 17? What about those numbers? Was a billion marbles a year possible with the technology of the 50's? Did he really spend $55,000 a year for the tournaments? The clouded details in 1962 make the 1941 article all the more interesting. Four years of history would be harder to distort in a material way. So what is the truth about the factory he acquired in 37 or so? and how he converted his recycled glass to marbles?

LOL. That wasn't such a bad name. lolol I also have a lot of other tournament-related articles from other years, so much that I can't post it all. So I've been trying to let it gel, thinking about a good way to organize it. I'm an information addict. I hadn't been on any binges in a while, but Don's Berry Pink trophy knocked me right off the wagon. So anyway ... the New York Times archives are free up through 1922. I'm hoping that just maybe the 1923 articles might be free next year. I was tempted to pay for some of them but I think I can at least wait until January, just in case they do become free. It would be neat to see articles from the first year the National Marbles Tournament was run. The 1923 articles might even fill in some of the blanks I'm missing from the 1922 story. Folks do like the occasional human interest recap, you know. Here's a pair of stories I have from 1926 -- with some serious human interest stuff built in. In 1926, if Danny Gore won the tournament his city was going to pay for him to go to college. AND he had his lucky shooter stolen. But he managed to win his semi-final without it. The shooter was found in time for the final but .... (click for larger/expanded versions of the articles) . . . . . . . . . Notice what the prizes were. There were trophies, if that is what was meant by "silver cups", but they didn't go to any of the winners. First and 2nd place and the "league winners" all got watches. And the champ also got baseball tickets. That's sort of how it was in 1922 also. There were trophies at different levels, and at least one medal. And the winner of the game which might not have happened was supposed to get a gold watch. A gold watch was at least one of the prizes the big winner got in 1925.

I think you're right! Thanks! I'll go fix that now. :-)

One reason it is interesting to see something as early as 1941 is that by 1962 there were significant errors in the history. Oh my goodness is that wrong in some places. (click link below for larger version, might have to doubleclick for full size) http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o151/modularforms/History/1962_BerryPinkObituary_NYT.jpg

Here's what appears to be a "press release" type article dated Jan. 28, 1941 about Berry Pink from when he was in the middle of building his empire. Interesting to see something from relatively early on. Subject to hype perhaps but still fresh. Still very close to the early events of his career as they were happening. He would have been about 40. The start of the Marble King company was still 8 years away at this time. (click to enlarge) (source) It's hard to read so I've done my best to transcribe it. Not sure I have it all right. Succeeds in Turning Refuse Into Gold Mine Four years ago an American named Berry Pink took the after- noon off from his work and strolled disconsolately through the city. He was fed up with his work and was trying desperately to think of some- thing new to do. As he walked he noticed refuse, . . . . . . . <---- did I read that correctly? and idly stood and watched while they tipped the rubbish into a cart. He was suprprised to see how many . . . . . . . <---- ? dirty old milk bottles and fragments . . . . . . . <---- ? of broken glass tumbled into the cart and although he soon resumed his walk, the germ of an idea had entered his head. There must be some use to which all the wasted broken and used glass in American could be put. And then he remembered a game he had played in his youth, and, in a flash the idea came to him--marbles-- that was the solution. Now, Berry Pink was what the Americans call a go-getter. Once started on an idea he saw it through . . . . . . . <---- ? --and with a vengeance! In a short while he had established a factory and was busy buying up all the old bottles, cold-cream jars and bits of glass he could lay his hands on, and converting them all into marbles. He also instituted a campaign to . . . . . . . <---- ? make America thoroughly "marble- conscious"--and he succeeded be- yond his wildest dreams. Today Berry Pink is known all over America as "The Marbles King" and, thanks to his efforts, more than 5,000,000 people in the U. S. play the game. The work he was fed up with might have been the one where he was jobbering Peltiers at Rosenthal. I wonder if the piece did come from Berry Pink Industries as part of the their PR or if it was written by someone on the outside. " In a short while he had established a factory and was busy buying up all the old bottles, cold-cream jars and bits of glass he could lay his hands on, and converting them all into marbles. " That sounds as if it says that Berry Pink actually made marbles himself in the late 30's. Is it possible? Is the location of his factory known? Whether it was simply a recycling plant or actually a marble factory, where would it have been?

Nice historical note. ... wishing the best for Dave and everyone at Jabo.

Anticlimactic postcript: There is record of Rech playing one more "world championship" match -- in September of '22. He lost, and one Francis Dinkey of West New York was declared the "marble monarch". September 8 But how did Francis Dinkey come to be in the game? No clue.

I thought I had enough articles to tell the whole story, but it was a convoluted story, and it's been a bit since I downloaded them, so now I can't recall. In any case, now I'm not seeing anything else about Rech or Markoff or Ross competing against each other. Here it is already July 9, 1922. And then sometime within the next month or so, plans had made for a more formal and better organized tournament the next year, with many cities invited in advance. Perhaps the greater New York plans fell apart. This is from an article by Armstrong Perry in The American Boy. Rech and McQuade are mentioned. Rech's New York challengers seem to have evaporated. That sort of makes sense, since Markoff had already lost a tournament to McQuade so he wasn't a contender for the national title. But did he play again? Pix from the article:

But what happened next?!?!?!

Just been having fun with the Times archives. Funny how important marbles were in the 1800's and early 1900's. The Times even imported stories from out of state. They reported on kids stealing marbles. On kids being arrested for playing marbles or playing marbles for keeps (in 1909 a judge in Washington declared keeps illegal). On marbles as gifts. 1884 was the year of the marble. 1885 was the year of the top and marbles "couldn't be given away". But in 1893 a bag of marbles would be welcome, especially if there were several 'reals' in it. Make the bag of duck or coarse linen and embroider the boy's initial on it. On marbles in a nostalgic way. On marbles in an educational and moralistic way. Rich society women apparently disapproved of marbles in 1909 but they were accused of turning their sons into mollycoddles. Public school boys had more "grit and vigor". On tournaments. How Arabian kids played marbles. On city planning, with parks for kids to play marbles. Marbles was bigtime. Oh yes, there was one about collecting marbles -- lol -- this boy had a huge collection of marbles without ever playing a game. He was loaning them and charging interest. Something like giving out 6 marbles and demanding 9 in return.

The story goes on! It is a hard battle but Buster Rech holds on in Jersey. Arrangements are made for him to defend his title in New York. Buster Ross wins in Queens. July 7 July 9

Back in the city, the competition heats up. 8-year-old Buster Ross appears to be the sentimental favorite in Queens. June 25

The games go on. Or they will when school lets out. A tournament is planned in Queens. The winner will go up against New York City's Nickey Markoff, for the Greater New York championship. June 11 Meanwhile, in New Jersey. Jacob Goldberg wins the statewide competition while Buster Rech watches. But now Buster will fight again. June 18

And Frank McQuade of Baltimore is the winner! Is this the end of Buster's reign? Was he too proud? May 21 (click to enlarge)

A new "world championship" tournament was arranged. This time the players would meet in Philadephia. Red Stoddard will represent Philadelphia. Frank McQuade plays for Baltimore. Nickey Markoff is the champ of New York City. And Marjorie "Babe" Ruth will play for Newark -- because no boys answered the mayor's call. But Jersey City is protective of its champion. Why should Buster have to prove himself in Philadelphia? He is already champion of the world. Challengers should come to New Jersey. If Buster doesn't compete he would just be "the obscure champion of Jersey City", replied the rotary club of Philadelphia. May 20

Buster's challenge was taken up by Washington D.C. Their champ was Mike Troiano. More stories are told in the Washington Post, but there's a fee for the articles so they'll have to wait. lol (The NY times archives are free from 1851 to 1922.) May 14 Buster beat Mike. He was now "officially" the world champion. But the excitement wasn't over.