Steph

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

With the six vane, three color cat's eyes, there are actually three variations that I know of. The common ones have the vanes in pairs as Al said: e.g., 2 blue, 2 red, 2 yellow. Then there's a one-way cross-thru. With the one-way cross-thru, one vane pair is usually white. That's the pair which usually crosses through. You might have 2 blue, 1 white, 2 red, 1 white. If the cross-thru vane is something other than white, that is special. Then comes the three-way cross-thru which Jane shows, and Al describes. The one-ways are hard to find but not as rare as the three-ways. This really needs pictures, but I'm pooped out with pix. [This space reserved for pix when I find 'em, unless someone else bails us out first. ] .

Wow Jane. They're all great. And that purple shooter choked me up a bit. Felicia, Jane's "Japan 3 way cross thru 6 vane cats" are some of the rarest early Japanese cats. Some of the most special of the special vane arrangements.

LOL. That's actually what prompted this thread. I saw the picture and went into a tailspin. When I read the description I saw where Alan said the bag contained all-reds ... so he at least acknowledged that something was weird ... but it was too late. All my sleeping Vitro questions came bubbling up to the surface, and voila! this thread. Now, you know I will not be able to pass up posting that picture. Should I do it now or later? Oh heck, here it is. P.s., for the record, Alan dates the bag as late 1950s-early 1960s. It has the seam down the middle on the other side.

Part of the reason for my confusion about Tiger Eyes: This picture was previously posted by Al but I'm not sure where. Are some of those just two colors? I mean, white plus one other color? Would the ones with a different color patch on either end and white in the middle match the ones in either Column #2 or Column #6 of Jane's board?

Oh boy!!!

Here's one more Marble King example before I stand out of the way and wait for the Vitro photographs. They're called St. Mary's cat's eyes. They were made at the original Marble King factory in St. Mary's, WV. I think the dates one these are roughly 1955 to 1958. There were other, one-color cat's eyes made in St. Mary's too, but I wouldn't be able to tell them apart from other Marble King cat's eyes. The ones we call St. Mary's are special because their vanes have two colors (alternating, like red-blue-red-blue), or four different colors with a different color for each of the four vanes. Funny thing about these, they came from a Tournament Assortment bag, so you might think they'd be an average mix, with mostly the most common ones, but I think these are some of the more rare colors. I'm pretty sure the most common color combo is blue/yellow, but none of those here.

Here are some modern Marble King cat's eyes. American-made. After 1990. Mine. Yes folks, I have actually taken a picture of my own marbles. These are some Marble King cat's eyes which could be as old as the 1970's. Not a very big picture. Maybe someone else has a better one. The vane structure is roughly the same as my more modern ones, but as you can see some of the vanes are translucent. A little closer view of another blister pack, partially filled with cats: So far the American-made marbles I've been showing have vane shapes fairly close to some foreign styles. Some of the American-made vanes have been wavier than a lot of foreign cat's eye vanes tend to be, but they've still been more or less wide and flat. There are more distinctive American-made cat's eye styles. Marble King and Vitro both made cat's eyes with very chubby vanes. And Vitro is famous for its cage style cat's eyes with very slender vanes. Maybe someone else will post some pix of those. They can be very photogenic.

More American-made cat's eyes. These are from C. E. Bogard & Sons. A "Mountaineer Shooters" package. Photos courtesy of Nancy (pollyestr2). I'm pretty sure they're standard size even though they say "shooters". :-) p.s., here's a link to David Chamberlain's Bogard article at Marble Mental, ARTICLE: THOSE LOWLY BOGARD CAT'S EYES!

And now here some Heaton brand cat's eyes. Heaton is an American company. IMHO these look quite close to Japanese style. Some American made ones have much different looking vanes. Here are some more Heatons, with a more wavy and imho American-looking vane. [edit: I believe these were said to have been dug at the Heaton site, but later posts said that black cats would likely have been Bogard. Bogard bought Heaton if I recall correctly.]