Steph

Tiger eyes:

. . (Fiber optic marbles)

. . (Mineral sphere)

One of Al's bags, from Vitro Tiger Eyes?.

Galen's quintessential Master specimen, from Master Tiger Eyes??

Couldn't be much more sure of date of manufacture than with Paula's jar of cat's eyes in Post #11 here, Anacortes Horseshoe Cat's Eye.

From Marblealan auctions:

(click images to enlarge)

19/32".

9/16" - 19/32".

31/32" Patches:

Here's the seller's description:

Up for auction is this poly bag of marbles from The Peltier Glass Co. Ottawa, Ill. Back of bag has made in United States of America. Front has Peltier Glass Marbles. Picture in the top right of the bag reads Marble Games Cat's Eye. Left upper part of the bag has Image of table says The Peltier Glass Co. Ottawa, Ill. Decorations Sparklets. Bottom right shows a boy on his knees shooting marbles. It reads Shooters all colors.. Bottom left corner reads The Peltier Glass Co. Ottawa, Ill. There are 5 assorted shooters inside measuring 31/32". 3 are 4 color patches, 2 are 3 color patches.

Were these marbles actually made by Peltier?

I wouldn't have guessed Pelt if I saw them loose. Also, some of the similar bags in the first post look like they may contain 4-vaned cat's eyes.

Update: I'm pretty sure they are Marble King marbles. Al and Ron explain the situation in a thread at LOM, Couldn't resist this one.

G. Kuhnert & Co. Sample Box, from this archived copy of Marble Alan's A History of Glassmaking in Lauscha, Germany, and Vicinity. (May it one day be restored to its rightful home!)

(click to enlarge)

G. Kuhnert & Co. was founded in 1861. Here are two of their ads from the archived page.

(click to enlarge)

Big Benningtons:

(click to enlarge)

Seller's description:

The box is about 5" x 4" x 1 1/8". The marbles are each about 1 1/8" in diameter. I don't know if they have ever been used or anything. They have such a rough finish I can't imagine how you could tell. Says 50 cents on the box. They must be very old to have been that cheap once.

The cat's eyes I orginally posted here have found a home in post #6 of this thread, Japanese Cat's Eye?, USA cat's eye?. So I've deleted them here to conserve attachment space.

I'll keep the thread though ... optimistically waiting for more Bogard pix!

Note: There may be other pix in the links here, Compilation: Original Packaging.

Here are some authentic antique china marbles from murmelwelt.de for comparison. See more examples at their site. In addition to the decorations being made with another type of brush or pen stroke, notice that the surfaces here don't have the conspicuous "age crazing" which the ebay seller quoted above seemed almost to praise.

Glazed:

Unglazed:

Rings and flower:

One sample from the eight pages of clay marbles at the same site:

And in case someone reading this thread has any doubt, you can check here to see what Benningtons look like.

Hi Pat.

I don't know how "cooking" is done either. Where did you read about fixing marbles by putting them in a bed of coals?

Steph

P.s., I don't think the marble fixers here charge very much for doing their magic.

Very modern clay marbles.

The Mega "Rustic", made this century:

. . (1) (2)

These Vacor "stone marbles" appear to have been introduced in 1999 or 2000.

. . (3)

These aren't "fake" and Vacor/Mega didn't call them antique. But it would be easy for an uninformed seller or buyer to mistake them for old.

After Galen's thread about the penguin I realized we could use some good pix of these on file for newbies.

Here's what some of the earliest simplest "Atlanta Porcelains" looked like. ("Early" here means appearing on the market sometime around 1991.) The picture is from this archived page of Marble Alan's site.

.... these are probably spheres that were used in mill drums. It needs to be noted that to my knowledge they never appeared in any collections prior to 1991 and they have never been encountered during archaeological investigations.

These "marbles," being comprised of industrial porcelain (introduced to America sometime after 1860), are heavy to the touch and measure 3/4" or slightly smaller and sometimes up to 13/16". When painted, they will often be brown, red, green, blue, purple, or beige. Some have designs on them, most likely a single star that exposes the natural color of the underlying porcelain. I surmise that these were made by placing on the sphere one of those stick-on stars teachers like to put on highly graded exams, dipping it in paint, then removing the star following drying of the paint. Others I have seen have even been brashly decorated with a magic marker, often in geometric patterns.

I've just been reminded about one of the most interesting threads I've ever seen about the background and possible original use of these porcelain balls: Atlanta Marbles.

Here's a sample selection of the "magic marker" version from an eBay seller. His "Bennington" is a variation I hadn't seen before, just a lot of dots.

AWESOMEAWESOME BENNINGTON SUPER OLD AND LOSTS OF CRAZING. A MUST FOR COLLECTORS JUST UNDER 3/4 INCH IN DIAMETER. I AM LISTING 100 DIFFERENT MARBLES 4 OR 5 A WEEK.

AWESOME RARE HAND PAINTED AND MADE CHINA. RINGED AND CLOVER PATTERN. GOOD CONDITION! AGE CRAZING, VERY NICE GRADE. JUST UNDER 3/4 INCH IN DIAMETER. I AM LISTING 100 DIFFERENT MARBLES 4 OR 5 A WEEK.

AWESOME RARE HAND PAINTED AND MADE CHINA RED RING AND GREEN MARBLE . GOOD CONDITION! AGE CRAZING, VERY NICE GRADE. JUST UNDER 3/4 INCH IN DIAMETER. I AM LISTING 100 DIFFERENT MARBLES 4 OR 5 A WEEK.

Aw heck, I still haven't found a better example of the most outrageously painted magic marker versions, so here's that lot with the cartoon penguin!

Yes, it all looks ribbony to me. There are some fine lines of white, but they seem to be following the wider lines around as part of a single ribbon.

Thanks. :-)

Big Boys. Appear to be St. Mary's Alleys. Made sometime between 1939 and 1949.

(click to enlarge)

How old would this bag of Rainbows be? ??

(click to enlarge)

My best guess at this time is these were made after 1990. Actually I'm fairly certain the rainbows with the lovely translucent base were after 1990. Likely in 2000 or later.

(click to enlarge)

If the sources for the pix aren't given they're probably from old auctions. Sorry, I wasn't keeping track of the sources yet when I saved most of these first ones.

Tournament Assortment, Berry Pink Industries. Check out the St. Mary's cat's eyes, which I think would have been made between 1955 and 1958. [edit: I based that guess on the assumption that St. Mary's cat's eyes were only made in St. Mary's. I've heard they may also have been made after the move to Paden City. However, there is obviously still a good chance that they're from the early period.]

(click to enlarge)

Here's a Tournament Assortment cloth bag. It looks like it may have most of the original marbles, but with more added. I see one blue and white St. Mary's cat's eye and some early Japanese cats, plus some Master Glass bananas. And I think there are a couple of steelies and at least one corkscrew.

(click to enlarge)

The cloth tourney bags were made in Japan but I don't think any declare that fact. However, there is a lookalike bag which is not Marble King brand, and I think that one does say made in Japan.

Note: There are other pix in the links here, Compilation: Original Packaging.

Ken, how do the marbles in the box here compare to the ones you have in hand?

Do you think these are Jennies?

Thanks,

Steph

They look identical to the ones Kokoken is showing on that very same post, #23. Even goes on to mention the box is a "bloodies" box filled with red "jennies". Mike implicitly calls the ones he listed "jennies" as well in his auction. So, yes.

-Brad

This box and Ken's didn't look identical to me. But if you see a match, that means something.

As to Mike's implicit id, for him to say he sees a match to a picture in a book means next to nothing to me. My impression from some of his auctions is that he sometimes implies things which might not be accurate.

Then if anyone came back later and said they'd learned the marbles weren't Jennies, he could say he never explicitly said they were, and wash his hands of it.

(That's my impression from some of his other auction listings.)

So, without backup from credible sources, all I had was a hesitant match between this box and Ken's.

Hence my questions.

From the sublime to the ... cat's eyes.

(click to enlarge)

The auction description:

age: was made around 1960 in ilmenau germany,condition:very good for the age,it containes 36 machine made marbles all in very good condition,size box:4-3/4inch long and 1-3/4inch tall,size marbles:13/16

When I saw the gallery photo for those, I guessed they were from Japan. When I read otherwise I did a search for some sort of confirmation. Here's a page which says this type of marble is from the 1950's and is the last kind manufactured industrially in Germany, Murmeln unsrer Kindheit, die originalen Murmeln der 50er Jahre. The site says it has some of the last marbles made in Ilmenau, and it offers them for sale. Here's a sample lot showing more of the old cat's eyes:

(click to enlarge)

Fair use. .

I don't know.

They're discussed starting in Post #23 here, CAC, "Worlds Best Bloodies"?, Need others input.

If you have Grist's Big Book, 3rd ed., look at p. 78, Plate 169. That's where I've read you can see a picture. I don't have the 3rd edition, so I don't know what you'll see!

This box is from the Marquee auction. The description said these were like the ones on p. 78 of Grist.

Which?

Why?

Thanks.

And then here you have your basic, world-famous Jabo cage-style cat's eyes from Reno, Ohio.

Don't know if the marbles are Ravenswood, but here's an Assorted Colors box like the ones they call "Our Leader" in that catalog. This is the 30 marble size.

(click to enlarge)

#131 box?

Does anyone have pix from the auction mentioned here, Akro Special Champions Box? Or anything like that?

Auction description:

You are bidding on (1) late 20's early 30's Champion Assortment, SHOOT STRAIGHT AS A KRO FLIES AKRO AGATES. Box is numbered #131 Made in the USA is on one end of the box and the other side has Manufactured by THE AKRO AGATE COMPANY CLARKSBURG, W. VA. Box is in pretty good shape but as you can see there is a puncture tear in the bottom left corner and end also has a tear. Bag is in really nice condition with the original tie and stone for making your circle in the dirt. You also get 26 beautiful marbles as seen in the photo's anybody that wishes to have more photos please do not hesitate to ask.

And then we jump ahead a decade or two. Here are some early Japanese cat's eyes. The ones with bright colors, and pretty, sometimes peachy base glass. Pre-1964.

Uncle Jack's Glass Marbles:

Source (with more pix and discussion): Old package or new?

And while I was at LOM looking that up I found a couple more links ...

Pressman dishes by Alley

Maker? (intriguing Pressman reference ... need to ask Chuck about that bag)