Steph

Maybe I'm wrong. Mine glows brightly. It is an Alley shade. It's darker in hand than in the photo. But it is not as dark as the right hand side of these two candidates for pistachio which I asked about in another thread. Most of the seasoned collectors who voted specifically did vote for the right hand side and I'llhavethat1 voted for even darker. Plus, the darkness of the ribbons was stressed and my ribbons obviously aren't dark. I think I got fixed on the idea that mine was in the ballpark and I didn't really register who was stressing the darker shades. Okay, I will stop calling it a pistachio. It's still an Alley though!

I've seen patterns I would call the "same" in at least 4 companies, and at least "similar" in still others. The "same" ones which I have provenance for are Alley, Champion, Cairo and Jabo.

I forgive you.

It's been IDed as a Jabo before, but so has the Alley. I posted them together the first time. That's when I first heard the immortal phrase, "Buttcracks don't lie". Then I posted the pistachio in a different thread and got a Cairo ID because of the little eye in back. It is an Alley though. Slam dunk. The dug Pennsboros Ron sent nailed it solidly. I think this one is a Cairo though. Two days ago I was leaning uncertainly toward Champion. Then last night I saw something last night in a pic from Alan's site which made me think "maybe Cairo". So that pointed me to the Cairo section of AMMM and got me looking closer than I had before. Got me looking closely into the case on p. 57. And I think I might see a match for my marble. The pic is dark, and the marbles are small, so it doesn't stand out. But I think it could be a match. Even if that particular one isn't a match, it has strong similarities. I'm seeing more similarities in the Cairos than I've seen in anywhere else. Here is the Cairo I saw last night. It came from Alan's old site. The colors don't seem to blend as much in mine as they do here but I think the shades are similar. I still don't know where mine is, so I can't doublecheck, but I think it's very close. If you have AMMM and want to check that case on p. 57, the marble which I think looks like mine is about one-third of the way from the right edge and a little more than half of the way from the top.

I don't think I got it yet. lol Here are some more Cairo Novelty of varying degrees of crackiness. Dug examples from Alan's old site. The last one may be the least buttcracky but it's the most cheeky!

Doesn't ring a bell. Couldn't say for sure. There were various pay-per-view sites I landed on and promptly forgot about before I finally decided I had to had to had to see something from a couple of them. I don't recall if any were particularly for ads or for magazines.

But seriously, there have been a few posts on innards. If nothing else we could gather some of the examples from those locations and of course more could be added.

:rol:

Thanks Al. :-) Bill, on the one hand, it sure is nice to be able to plug in keywords and jump relatively quickly to any number of papers. On the other hand, I can't easily "browse" any of these papers online. You might find things which would slip through my best targetted searches. Stuff hidden in ads. Surprising marble-connected topics. Photographs.

What part don't you see, the Alley or the pistachio? The marble on the left is a Pennsboro Alley. If you can't detect the pistachio shade then my camera washed even more color out than I thought.

Online archives. Some I stumbled upon. Some I had to get creative with keywords in order to find. Some were free. Some I paid to see.

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?