Steph

My guess on that one would have been Jabo. I'm looking for more buttcracks! CAC? Pelt? some colorful Akros? I've seen 'em. But I can never find 'em when I want them!

A beautiful marble not often seen. Patry's Christensen Orange Peel:

Peerlesses are mostly known for their unusual patch shapes. But I think some can be more normal looking. How can one be sure though? How does one get a positive peerless i.d. for a neatly shaped patch? Well, it was the peerlesses which were used for the picture marbles, and for few others like the Cotes Master Loaf advertising marble at the beginning of this post. So I thought it could be fun and useful to collect a photo bank of picture marbles to show a range of possibilities. Feel free to add other peerless pix or info, picture marbles or otherwise. The ones I post are most likely from auctions. There may be some exceptions. Some identifiers can be found in the pic names. Some pix may be clickable for larger images.

LOL It felt good just to get the questions off my chest. I think I was prepared for an idea like this: Sorta needed to feel like the bases were covered before I jumped to that though. If not said carefully it's very close to "they all look alike", which wouldn't be true of course.

Some background from American Machine-Made Marbles: Champion started making marbles in Pennsboro, Ritchie County, VA sometime around 1940. Bill Heaton founded the Heaton Agate Co. in Cairo, WV in 1946. The Bogards bought Heaton Agate and all their equipment in 1971. Jack Bogard said in an interview that they also bought one of Ravenswood's machines. He said Champion got another. And then a couple of decades later Jack's new company Jabo got Dave McCullough from Champion! AMMM says that the later Ritchie County marble companies, a group which includes Heaton Agate, used machines which were "copied or closely replicated" from Champion designs. On the other hand Bill Heaton is credited with designs of his own, which Dave McCullough used to build a machine while he was at Champion. This machine was used in the 1980's to produce the "Whirlwind" and many of the New Old Fashioneds. So much interrelation! Question 1: Did either Bogard or Champion use Ravenwood's machines? Jabo bought Bogard's equipment in 1987, and bought Vitro in 1992. AMMM says that Heaton's marbles ranged from 3/8" to about 1". However, AMMM also said that while Jabo was contemplating the Vitro purchase, Dave McCullough was 'particularly interested in the 1", 3/4", and the pee wee marble machines that Vitro owned'. Question 2: Which sizes of machines did Jabo get from Vitro? From Bogard? . . . . (Late note: I now see that the Bogards traded Heaton's 3/8" machine to Marble King.) Many 5/8" Jabo Classics look like Anacortes Vitro marbles. Also, the swirl patterns on Jabo's 1-inchers can look parrot-y. However, the first Classics (Figure 1) were made in 1991, so they were made with a Bogard machine. It seems most likely that the Fall 1992 Classics run would also have been done with Bogard equipment. But which Bogard equipment? Many Ravenswoods look like they could be mistaken for Jabos. It makes one wonder. Question 3: Were the first Jabo Classics of Heaton heritage or Ravenswood? Figure 1. Photo by Steve Sturtz. Question 4: Which company's machines were used for which size of Jabo classic? 5/8", 3/4", 1", and peewees. Most or all of this is covered in the above. One thing I want to pin down is whether Jabo used both Vitro and Bogard machines for the 5/8" runs. And if so, it would be cool to have some idea of the proportion. After thought: I suppose there are other possibilities. Perhaps the machines are combined and/or modified. Or even replaced with new equipment. Question 5: What happened to Bogard/Heaton's cat eye machine(s)?

I don't know where to put this, but it was cool: Why West Virginia?, or Ohio? The question was why Ohio and West Virginia had so many marble factories. The answer involved access to silica sand and natural gas. That led to a discussion about silica sand in general, including the high quality sand Peltier used. 1865 Great Lakes Shipwreck Marbles Someone disputed the date of the marbles in the original post. Still interesting material.

Very nice presentation. How wonderful that you could be part of Jabo's history.

The light orange is actually yellow. 4 vanes. Each vane is half yellow and half orange. The orange is transparent.

So that's nice. There seems to be no objection to calling the little red one a realer. Noticing that the base on the one I'm looking at wasn't absolutely crystal clear made me feel better about that possibility. I imagine it would photograph even less like clear glass and would look even more "right" then. The feathering inside is really cool. Cute mibs, Kevin. I'm curious about the brown and yellow one. I wouldn't have guessed Pelt but I don't know who made it.

Yes, that's the kind. The red I'm holding looks like a littermate to the red at the top left of your pix. The green base wouldn't be called a realer from what I understand.

Darla, the 17/32" one is yours. zig zaggy red patch. Did you happen to take a pic of it?

What are your smallest peerless patches and acme realers? Did they do anything weird in the smaller sizes? I'm looking at a couple of little mibs with very snaky patches. One is a little under 17/32". The other is a little less than 9/16". The bases look tantalizingly like realer bases, butttttt they have a lot of clear. (edit: not crystal clear -- ever so slightly cloudy) Where there is white it has a grain. The white in the smaller one only takes up about half of the base but it has a very feathery, pelty look. The white looks practically transparent when backlit, and has an orange glow. So, I want to call them realers, except that they have so much clear. Sorry for no pic. My camera is still out of commission.

Felicia hasn't had a lot of time to read the board. She may not have seen this one. Or maybe she wouldn't open a thread with "buttcracks" in the title. ;-)

An assortment of repro boxes.

Hey Brian, what happened to your buttcracks?! I'm getting the dreaded red X. Those were good examples. Here's one from Alan's old Marble King page:

A couple of jack o'lanterns Tom Thornburgh: Jabo:

What do you have by way of non-Jabo buttcracks? On marbles. ;-) Here are a couple of Alley buttcracks. my tater bug: a fluorescent pistachio:

So, it sounds like the $99.99 for this one was not a steal and not too high. I usually sort my ebay searches by highest price first in an attempt to see what the most interesting listings were. I stop looking when I get down to about $50 final sale price. Which means that in addition to missing all the bargains Al gets on original packaging, I also only see the golden rule marbles people spend a lot for. Like the person who bought 4 individual ones without cases for $61. But I did a search just now specifically for Golden Rule marbles and found that the price for individuals with cases is in the neighborhood of $9 to $11 after shipping. Now I know. Thanks for the feedback everyone.

This had a buy-it-now on it. My first impression was that it was a bargain. I wonder how long it lasted before it was sold. Any ideas on a good price for it? Box of 12 Golden Rule marbles, each in their own box. They are a little hard to come by even individually, right? They're not still being made?

Another "not even a draft yet" post, just an idea. Some marbles are too common or too plain to show up in most books, but people still like to learn about them. Essentially Single Color marbles: Dark Blue Swirl Game Marbles?? Steelies: What Can You Tell Me About A Steel Marble Steelies

Someone asked me what a Buttermilk looked like. First of all it is a tri-lite. And here's the description from Chuck B.'s article in the WVMCC newsletter, Issue #15, June 2006. Here are some photos which have been shown at various times. A classic design posted by Duffy: Two posted by Mary M. Guy and Randy both said the black ribbons were okay. A shooter sold by Alan: Dani's: Carole's:

Spotless? not quite! lol

I know simple patches like this aren't worth much ... and that makes them all the more annoying. Coz they're too trivial to argue about but I don't want to i.d. them wrong for someone else. Anyway, this thread is for mibs which might be taken for Vitro All Reds if you didn't know better. This isn't a response to the akro versus vitro discussion in the i.d. forum. I've been flagging "data" for this topic for while now. You can see how some Akros might be taken for All-Reds. Bob, wouldn't you think some of these were Pepsi mibs? (from post #7 here) And then there are some MKs which seem to be trying to confuse. Auction pix. Sorry, they're hard to see. If you have better and wouldn't mind sharing ... Here's one of Al's all-red bags. After seeing the some of the patch shapes on the MKs, I might have tried to get too clever and guessed MK for some of these. I bet there are modern ones which look like all-reds too. Anyone else have tricky examples? or hints? Like ... does chunky aventurine likely mean MK or can Vitros have chunky aventurine also?

Here is an example of the bag Berry Pink patented while he was jobbering Peltiers for Rosenthal. The goals of the double compartment design were rigidity and visibility, at relatively little expense. Earlier mesh bags were floppy, which meant that marbles would slosh around and end up in a bunch at the bottom. Boxes were expensive and you couldn't easily see the marbles inside. This was his solution. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (click to enlarge patent) . . . . . . . The contents are incredible. The label is incredible. It's altogether amazing. Alan's description: