Steph

Looking for nominations for world's best snottie! LOL From the Glossary of Marble Players' Terms: " SNOTTIE: noun. Familiar form of snot agate" " AGATE, SNOT: noun. An agate with a veined and clouded interior; considered very superior" The more realistic and disgusting they look the better, sounds like! (but pretty snotties may enter too. ;-) Um, I think this one deserves a Bart icon :Cartoon_177: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . snotty

Way cool Derrick. Yes, marblemiser ... it would be neat to see your pump balls. :-) The list is getting quite long. Anyone mention applicators yet, like for roll-on perfume ... And ballot balls. Not industrial, but not play exactly.

Guess what! According to one of their ads, M.F. Christensen made THE BEST GLASS BALLS FOR PUMP VALVES When I noticed that you said yours look hand gathered I immediately thought of MFC, but I discounted that because I'd just read the Cohill book and "pump valve" wasn't ringing a bell. But sure enough, there it is. VERY :cool sign: ! Btw, if furniture casters are hand-gathered, they're MFC's too. (or should I say "are most likely MFC too"? ... I'll doublecheck the text on that. There's no index so it may take me a bit to find it.) late update: akro advertising in 1929 claimed they made them too. (pump balls and furniture casters both) still am not sure about the hand-gathered reference. :-)

I'll have to! Thanks for the lead! Valves are a mechanical notion I have a bit of a mental block over. :-) Hmmm ... here's a patent from 1854 for a pump ball valve. I think this one is metal. The ball valve is labelled F in the figure. (there are large size pix of the whole thing at the patent office ... the small ones were the only ones I could do a screen capture with.) That's probably as far as my research is going to get today ...

Thanks! Love 'em!

If you could only save one of your ceramic marbles, which one would you choose? lol No seriously ... anyone have any nice ceramics they'd like to show off. With all the scares about the fake chinas and modern bennies, it would be nice to celebrate some "real" ones. edit: actually, what I wanted to ask about was Pennsylvania Dutch china marbles but in case they were too rare I decided to broaden the question. Anyone here even have one of those, picture or no picture?

Here's one recipe for fried marbles. There are other ways to do it. The 1963 box this "recipe" is from. (source)

KC Marble Crazy 2008!!!!! (videos of the marble show!)

Is that the marble at the bottom of the spout? http://jaypaull.com/gallery2embedded.php?g2_itemId=83&

What is a back-flow preventer? Is that a type of valve? ... that's the keyword I was searching on yesterday when I found the marble guns. I felt sure I'd heard of marbles used as valves somewhere. But as I only have a vague idea of what a valve is ... well, ... I haven't been able to target my search very well. lol

The story I read refers to a time before they were easily made locally. Well, the first story I read mentions it vaguely, but then I looked for confirmation and landed at an Akronmarbles.com page about Sam Dyke's patents. (here) Here's the quote at the head of that page:

just learned a new one for me ... hope I have it right: clay marbles used for ballast, i.e. to steady ships, on the way from Germany to America, where then they would be sold as toys making their transport cost little or nothing

graining balls for stone lithography

How many industrial uses for marbles can you think of? Or non-play and non-art uses.

This one inch hollow steelie was attributed to the Wolverine Toy Company. (source) Another eBay seller once said their hollow steelies were made by the Hopkins company of Minnesota.

Pachinko balls are peewee sized steelies used for the Japanese game. They come with all sorts of decorations. Here's one example. . (source) Wikipedia entry on Pachinko

More solid steelies. Cannonball brand. "Steelee Shooters" and "Steel Marbles": Source of the Steelee Shooters. The 2nd pic is obviously from ebay but I don't know the seller. edit: I've been presuming those were solid Steelies. Maybe someone will correct or confirm.

Okay, I've thought about it! Now I think I see the distinctions you are drawing. Yea! So, do you think the action under the open panels adds so much dimension to the marble that it makes it that much more special than its "banded transparent" or "colored Indian" counterparts? Or do you think it is having a neat name which explains the prices submarines command? or perhaps a combination? ... or something completely different ...

Oh boy ... thank you. i'm going to have to keep thinking about this. this is heavy stuff

Pictures would be nice! I'm trying to understand the mystique surrounding them. I'm not sure I quite understand all the entries in Baumann's tables of rarity but it looks like Submarines appeared in comparable numbers to similarly constructed marbles which didn't have the extra strands under the surface. Yet the prices on submarines run so much higher than on the similar marbles. Any insight will be appreciated. Thanks.

LOL Scott. Are you sure you don't have them all? Oh wait, Dougie said he has a few. Hi Dougie! Welcome.

Mesh bag: (click to enlarge) (source)

Cool! Here's one I saw on eBay last month. I've been wondering if it was "real". Here's what the seller said about it:

Ting Tong Tang gameboard. (click to enlarge) (source) As of this time the seller has 16 available, along with many other non-marble alox items: wooden checkers, an advertising decal for shoe laces, a baton ad, a lasso, jacks, a clown hand puppet, and a "whistle handled carnival lash whip".

One big difference would be the pontil on the Japanese transitional. iiuc. uh, sorry for the delay in answering. I was trying to allow time for an expert to weigh in, then the thread sort of slipped off the page. :-)