Steph

The winners for the Akro prize name contest were to be announced in the June 1930 issue of Boys Life. Anyone know if the announcement was made? and if so, what page number?

Wonderful info. :cool sign: That leaves a loose end of Akro comparing their glassies to brandies (and wine agates) but it takes care of the big stuff! Any idea what handmade clearies were sold as?

I echo your thoughts. I posted a link to this thread at Glass Addiction. I've been wanting to post the link to their comments. Here's that thread.

Akro Prize Name box with contest coupons. (click to enlarge) (source) Some text from the enclosure introducing the prize names and explaining the contest: Then came the contest rules. There were to be five prizes, ranging from $10 to $100. The deadline for entries was Midnight, May 1, 1930. And winners were to be announced in the June issue of Boys' Life.

You know we always say it, but you really DO make me wish I was there!

Here's another version. Al posted this one at LOM I think.

Thanks. I find this particular pack so fascinating. Weird to have a pelt sneak in. Plus the black widows. Plus, basically the most early-looking mix of marbles I've seen in one of these horseshoe blister packs. I know this package style was used for many years, and usually has clearly newer patches and cat's eyes in it.

This sure looks like a rainbo to me. You? Anyone have an explanation for it? Seen any other Pelts at Paden City? (click to enlarge) Did they order out for pelts? Were they cleaning up their warehouses and found something from back in the day of the mesh bags? Any ideas? (click to enlarge) update: that is not a Marble King company bag. That was packaged by Berry Pink before he created the Marble King company.

The "latest, modernistic Agates" aka "Prize Names" were advertised in the Sears 1930 Spring and Summer catalog. This ad replaced the previous year's ad featuring onyx marbles. (Also George Sourlis info, from his article in WVMCC #18) When would the Spring and Summer catalog have gone to print? And when would Akro have needed to be filling Prize Name boxes to be confident they could meet demand?

ah :-) Glad my simple record keeping was able to help a little. :-)

:cool sign:

Akro Uniques: (click to enlarge) (source)

Update from the Q&A section of the auction:

See Post #4. I guess Al recognized the box and seller. ?? Ah, here's the seller's "about me" page.

Maybe the prizename boxes were more for assortments. Maybe someone had a need for a bunch of blue corks, and this is how they were sent out. And while it is theoretically possible for it to have been backfilled "anytime", there are some situations in which it is less likely to have occurred. There are so many possibilities. So much context isn't shared. Would this "Lee" Al mentioned backfill and not tell? Are most of his findings from the really really wild as he travels around? So many possibilities. And some possibilities include things which to me seem like plausible reasons for this box to be original. And I guess that's why I'm on the fence. That and I'm a romantic, so I like to keep the options open about these new possibilities. :-)

So I'm still on the fence about this one. If workers would mix different colors into specific color-labelled boxes as needed, mightn't they be adaptable and put blue corks in a blue-labelled box? Seems like a possibility. If backfilled, when might the filling have occurred? Things I wonder about ... :-)

(the end of the box says "BLUE")

100 count box of mostly swirls, with some question about whether the white marbles belong. Auctioned by Morphy. (click to enlarge) (source) A larger version posted by Galen:

lovely. Glad it has a name ... vitros with names seem more likely to get shown than vitros without. Or maybe it's simply that the ones with names are more memorable. Whatever it is, thanks for showing yours. :-) If this didn't already have such a specific collector's name, would it be considered a superior?

Why that late? They were making the prize names on one machine in late 1929 or early 1930, and still making slags on other machines at the same time?

Right. The names were used for swirled marbles. And then for corks. Thus the ambiguity. Without more info one way or the other, do we know exactly what "onyx" meant on July 1, 1929? The introduction of Prize Names involved two issues: (1) The new cork pattern. And (2) the new glass combos. The rod and cup mechanism patent was applied for in 1928 so what was stopping Akro from using it to fill up their onxy boxes in, say, March 1929? And then perhaps they started playing around with the new glass combos after they felt comfortable with their new machinery? Seems like there's still some gray area. Still some open questions at the moment. At least based on the info I've seen so far. We have some great info. I feel really good about the rough date of 1929 for the transition to corks, and it's awesome that we can be as specific as that. I'm satisfied. I simply noted the ambiguity of the names because it's stopping me from narrowing it down more than that based on what I know so far.

Marie, I care. I knew at least one other person also cared. He and I were talking about it by email when we came to an informational impasse and decided it might help to ask if anyone "out there" had more info. Sue, sorry. Scott, according to Cohill's book, Horace Hill started working for MFC in 1908 and it is believed his nafarious deeds took place later. Also, I think the plans he stole were still for machines to make slags. The patent application he filed in 1912 was turned down for being too close to Martin Christensen's earlier designs. Hill's 1914 application was granted but it appears that his modified designs were seriously flawed, showing how little he understood the designs he had stolen. And it does appear that it took Akro a long time to finally work out the kinks. (p.s. you messed with my head when you said lashes are only found on Akros because isn't it the lashes on master sunbursts which sometimes lead to their misidentification as sparklers?) Everyone, thanks for the input. So it does sound as if it was around the end of 1929 before Akro was ready to go live with a corkscrew promotion. Last observation which occurs to me here is that there is some ambiguity in the July 1929 pricesheet: cardinal red, onxy and imperial all being names under which corks were sold at some point. It still leaves open the possibility that corks might have been in public hands before they came into their own as a special style with new color choices.

Anyone know about the mibs in this box, and who would have made them? They look similar to Jane's and mine. They are highly fluorescent.

When did Akro cork production start? How far can the date be narrowed down? For example, I know it was somewhat before May 1, 1930. Had to be because that's when the Prize Name naming contest ended. But how much before that?

More Qualatex. The New York entry in the Travelog Collector Marble set. (source)