Steph

Now this is pretty funny! What do you think about these? (ebay auction photo)

dittos to Ann. Cat's eyes are relatively easy to collect, and the Peterson and Castle book gives a nifty checklist for what to start looking for.

That's an interesting package. It does have the choking hazard warning, but it's not an extra sticker added on. To the best of my understanding, the 1970's packages said "40 American Made Glass Marbles" in the lower left corner, and the white choking hazard sticker was placed over that. The package I see at that link is practically identical to the 1970's packages, but it has the choking hazard warning down on the lower left where the 1970's packages said American Made. So it appears that for awhile Marble King was selling modified 1970's packages, with the white sticker added on after the law changed in 1979. And now they've moved to Retro packages, in the 1970's style, but with the choking hazard warning built in. And check it out, the retro packages have the "40 American Made Glass Marbles" statement back, but now it's on the belly of the little guy in the top right corner. That's pretty cool.

I think it would be educational to see something along the lines of what Dani showed with the slags vs. transparent swirls. A line-up of oxbloods and a line-up of reds, side by side. Might help bring the concept home. I can't supply it. So it's just a thought. :-) edit: I was able to do a comparison shot after all. Red on top. Left and right oxblood. Bottom probably oxblood (I think it is but it's hard to see in just a photo because the oxblood ribbon goes below the surface in a strange way).

One thing which isn't a slag but which can be confused for one is a "transparent swirl". I don't know how to explain the difference.

I did some research to find when the choking hazard warning labels started. My best guess was that it was the result of the 1979 Child Safety Protection Act. That's why I was hopeful that these blister packs might be from the 1970's. (But after 1972, because they have the "for ages 3 and up" advice, which I think started in 1973, when the 1972 Consumer Product Safety Act was implemented.)

Does that mean you have more? :-) Edit: yes, she has more! (Aren't those kewl!)

This scan shows a pelt box labeled "National Marbles" (preprinted) with "Specials" stamped in the middle. What year might this box have come from? Are these "tweeners"? Source: p. 137 of American Machine-Made Marbles

I _think_ the stopper was in the neck of the bottle. And I _think_ the marble was wider than both the mouth of the bottle and the opening at the bottom of the neck. Definitely wider than the mouth of the bottle. Both the marble and the bottle being made of glass, I don't imagine there was a tool which could reach in and pull the marble out through the mouth. I read somewhere the kids used to break the bottle open to get the marble out.

That line would be one of the seams of the marble. (Well, the only seam of this marble, since it's only half there!) It wouldn't hurt to consider one of the seams of a two-seam marble as the "top", and the other as the "bottom". It's relative, I'm sure! (lol) Some people might consider the seams as being on the side. But for me, the two seams are definitely the first and second things I look at. So, "top" and "bottom" would work for me. So, to recap, the vertical line in Carole's first marble "where the red meets the yellow" is the seam. The three red bands and the yellow band are called ribbons. Carole's marble has six ribbons. We can see those four in the first picture. In the 2nd picture, we can see signs of all six, four red and two yellow. And we can see that they extend all the way from the part we see running along on the surface, to the very middle of the marble.

Felicia, I'm not sure I understand your question. I was just about to come and write a note thanking Carole (thanks Carole, those are real gems!) and making an explanation for newbies who might be reading this and maybe don't know about the issues about how deep colors go in NLR's. Over the course of many years, Peltier made many marbles called "Rainbos". The style changed over the years. In the early days, their boxes said National Line on them, and so we call their earliest Rainbos "National Line Rainbos". Here's a box Galen likes to show. It says National Rainbo Line, not National Line Rainbo! .. but we call them NLR's. I think National Line was sort of the brand, and Rainbo was the style name. There's a picture here, Some More Rainbos, No. 6 Pelt NLR Stock Box, with a great view of the contents of the box. This box gives Rainbo as the style name and doesn't say "National Line" on the view showing, but it still says "National". Specifically, "National Toy Marbles". So, those are the older style rainbos, the NLR's. On the archived copy of Marble Alan's Peltier Glass Company page, he says that the NLR's were made from about the late 1920's to the late 1930's. And then Peltier's later rainbos, which we just call plain Rainbos, appear to have been made from about the late thirties, through the 1940's. [Edit: they were made longer than the 40's. At least into the 60's. Maybe longer than that.] There has been a sort of rule of thumb in circulation that the ribbons on the older National Line Rainbos stay mostly on the surface, and the ribbons on the newer, plain "Rainbos" run deeper. But Carole is showing National Line Rainbo halves. And you can see that the ribbons in those run all the way to the middle. The ribbons in the first picture are what you see on the outside surface of the marble. The second picture is the middle of the marble. The ribbons in the second picture are the same ribbons that you see on the surface. They're thinner, but running so deep that you can still see them in the middle. So ... we see that things aren't as cut and dried with NLR's as the old rule of thumb says. :-)

I've read about that before, about the stoppers, that is. (I hadn't read that exact page, where it mentioned "hand-pressed" marbles. That's another subject I'll have to remember to get back to on a later date.) I've heard about/seen two different kinds of marble stopper. One built into the lid, and just rolling around in a sort of a cage. So, it would rely on gravity to hold the seal when the bottle was upright and not in use. And the second built into the neck of the bottle, I think. And I think that may have relied on the pressure of the carbonation pushing it up to keep the seal. (That's the Codd bottles ... I think.) I don't know. I haven't even seen a picture of a Codd bottle, not since I learned about the marble inside and started keeping my eye out for one. I would love to know how the bottle was made. And how they got both the marble and the drink inside it. lol

The Bogard article at Marble Mental was about a sampling which David Chamberlain took from cat's eye packages. The bananas Ron mentioned would be something else entirely. He said he didn't think they ever even made it to market.

Now how about those bananas? I never even heard of any from Bogard. Just pelt and master and maybe foreign.

Not obvious, lol. But I saw enough to hope! They're "common", but they're nice commons. Nice vintage American stock. :-) Classics.

I thought you might have some of those. When they have more than one color in the same vane they're called hybrids. (by most of us, I think) Some people object to the use of the word "hybrid" though, because to them the term implies something more accidental. For example, at the end of a run of green marbles, and the beginning of a run of blue marbles, there might be some stripey blues and greens as the last of the green glass is flushed out. Two-color (and sometimes more color) Vitro and Marble King cats appear consistently enough to make them seem to have been intentionally made that way.

Felicia, before the bananas start marching out, here's a quick pic with some more "common" cat's eyes. I think these are mostly Vitro. There are several of the chubby-vaned kind, as well as some variations on the classic cage style. Some of them have a little two-color "hybrid" action going on. Probably not enough to make them valuable but a little bit of extra color for accent. The green ones have aventurine. I don't see any with only 4 chubby vanes in this box. I must have put those somewhere else. Yeah, I remember now. Their coloring didn't blend all that well with these, so I decided they might be from a different maker, probably marble king. I'm guessing the chubby vaned ones are from the 60's. For the record, some of the chubby vanes meet in the middle. Some of them have a little separation, but not enough to tempt me to call them cage style cats. (Someone recently asked somewhere about whether it was the separation which made the difference between cage style and not. I don't remember who, where or how recently. lol)

From M.F. Christensen and the Perfect Glass Ball Machine: America's First Machine-Made Glass Toy Marble Factory, by Michael C. Cohill (by way of hip Lloyd Huffer)

okay. I think I have the tiger eyes figured out. Many thanks!

Does an all-red have a half and half white ribbon in the middle? p.s. I hear both of ya'll. Very persuasive testimonials for the WVMCC.

Thank you very much. What is a "half and half" ribbon? I think I get it but I would like to confirm, esp. in the case of the Type 4 Tiger Eye. When there's a clear base, the half and half ribbon would be brushed on the surface, in two pieces, to form one equatorial ribbon. Correct? In the Type 4 case, is there an additional white ribbon brushed onto the opaque white base?

What are the four types? I've seen more about this somewhere, but I'm not finding much now. Here's one of the first places I think I saw two-color tiger eyes id-ed, WHERE WERE THE VITRO COLLECTORS??

Thanks Al. Why would they do that?

Shifting back to American makers now, here's my favorite link to show anyone about Vitro cat's eyes, Anacortes Horseshoe Cat's Eye. In that thread I asked specifically about horseshoe style cat's eyes, which are a special variation for which the Vitro plant in Anacortes, WA became famous. However, the horseshoe style was most definitely not the only cat's eye the Anacortes plant produced. There are tons of great pictures in the thread, both horseshoes and others. Some of the non-horseshoes are "cage-style" cat's eyes, with slender wiggly vanes. Some look like sort of a mix of cage-style and blade-style (imho). (p.s., it case it's not obvious, it turns out that the cat eye I was asking about was not a Vitro. I still don't know what it is, but I'm guessing Asian.) The Anacortes plant was in operation from 1989 to 1992, but Vitro was making cat's eyes for a long time before that. There are some cage style cats prominently featured in this super rare Gladding Vitro box from the 1970's. (These pix are from an old thread here. I do not know who originally posted them. ?? If I remember correctly it was said that only about 200 of these boxes were made, possibly distributed to store managers?) Vitro started making chubby vaned cat's eyes in the 1950's. I'm not sure when they changed to cage style.

Quick answer: Could be. Doesn't have to be. The style was carried on by other Asian manufacturers. And I think by manufacturers in other countries. My general understanding of the general trend is that the colors started out brightest and the bases clearest in Japan. Then the colors became duller and the bases took on dingy tints as time went by. But now there are some crystal clear and super pretty ones from Vacor in Mexico. unless I'm mistaken! lol