Steph

Green Hornets ... and Katos:

(The first Green Hornet is from Alan's old site. The next is is from a Bob Block auction. The Kato is Ron Shaw's.)

For more about the Kato:

the elusive Kato, (sorry about the fingers!)

(all MK)

Spidermen:

(from the USPS, one of Alan's recent auctions, and Alan's old site, resp.)

(pelt and MK)

Supermen:

(pelt and akro)

I hadn't heard of the Indian connection before you mentioned it yesterday in the other thread.

I know imperials can be irritating because ebay sellers keep trying to pass them off as antique, handmade, akro or master! I still like some of them though. How old are they really likely to be?

That was Question 1. Questions 2 & 3 are whether the two mibs at the front of this group are likely to be imperial.

They look sorta imperial in some ways, but both the surface and the seams are much smoother.

Updated answer: Very likely to be modern ... but some of the smoothest "MM-mimics" are vintage. See Charles' Irene Mfg. Co. box here, Made In England?

Space for other stuff.

(click pix to enlarge)

Red Goose Shoes promo carton with corks:

From the auction description:

This is a great red Goose Shoes box with 5 Akro Agate Co. corkscrew marbles. The box measures 3 3/8" x 3/4" x 3/4". It is in excellent condition. The corkscrews are red & transluscent white. They all have a very thin brown line in the white along the red.

I wonder if that thin line of brown is special somehow. Or were those just red corks and anything else was incidental?

Here is another batch of red corks with maybe a little brown. Nice red. Apparently not what today's collectors call Imperials though. Did Akro call them Imperials? And if so, did Akro call the ones in the Red Goose box Imperials too? [Edit: to me now, years later, the base on those in the Red Goose box looks like Moss Agates and looks like it could be different from the base of the ones in the Imperial box below.]

. . (1, 2)

To put the question another way, if we opened one of the cartons in the following clip from one of Dani's Akro ads, what would the Imperial have looked like? Sort of an ordinary (to us) red cork, or something more fancy?

. . (3)

I checked the contents pictured for the No. 32 boxes shown in Post #3 above. There are no Cardinal Reds there so they weren't following the recipe given in this circular. So, I won't try to draw any conclusions about from that about the red corks would have been called. (By the way, the boxes in Post #3 are decorated slightly differently from the box in the ad.)

edit: Craig/Spara50 has added another box of Imperial corkscrews to the body of examples, Some Recent Stuff, Akro Imperial Box, Red Angels & more.

This Codeg Gloria Marble Mosaic box has foil marbles from Germany. It says "Made in England, Marbles Foreign".

Out of my collection, here are some bag pictures of Codeg - some say 'Empire Made' and some say 'Foreign Made'. The 'empire' jives with Tony's mentioning somewhee in the British Empire so maybe the Made in England meant just that...?

Yeah, what Al said. lol. (I even reloaded the page to see if someone else had made a post while I was drafting mine, but yours didn't show up, Al.)

It would make sense that manufacturers in British territories would want to be allowed to claim the advantages of being part of the Empire. And one of those would be the right to say their wares were authentically British.

Could the same company still be producing them for someone else?.

Most of the marbles we buy in the U.S. with that general style are made in China. We call them Imperial marbles because the Imperial Toy Company is their most famous distributor here. Imperial was founded in 1969, after Irene and Codeg sold their marbles.

Perhaps Irene and Codeg licensed machines in Hong Kong, and then after the British companies left the operation, Imperial picked up the license?

But would the marble factory being located in a British Crown Colony and run by a British company be enough to allow Codeg to say "British Made"? (When their marbles came from Germany or Japan, they said "Foreign".)

Or did the marbles actually have to be made in England to earn that label? That's the question of the day.

Could it be that the marbles actually were made in England? Maybe the machines were first operated in England, and then relocated to Hong Kong to take advantage of cheaper labor?

Maybe I'll write House of Marbles and ask them.

Tony, what is your understanding of the term "British made"?

Could it ever have included things made in any British territory around the world, not just in Great Britain proper?

Steph

Oh wow. Nice, smooth, vintage, but sure as shootin' that's what we've been calling Imperial!

Charles, that box is a beaut!

The glimpse we get of the marbles looks like they could be an older (much nicer) version of the ones in the Codeg box. Somewhere on a Master to Imperial continuum, with the Irene closer to Master and the Codeg closer to Imperial.

I wonder if Scott was onto something with his British Ancestry thing. Or some other loophole. For example, if they were made in British colonies by companies with British corporate offices could they legally have been called British-made? (even if the workers were, say, Hong Kong natives?)

Dug at Lauscha!, by eBay seller cocona36

(click pix to enlarge)

Cane, drops and other glass:

Marbles:

Doll eyes:

Human prosthetic eyes, plus a piece which looks like it might have been the start of an eye:

No new marble pix to add yet.

But here's a pair of Fortune Telling Balls. As noted in Alan's auction description below, the amber is original to the box.

Auction description:

This lot, A MARBLE CONSIGNMENT, consists of Czechoslovakian "Fortune Telling Ball" box (ca. 1930s). It has approximate dimensions of 2-19/32" (66 mm) by 2-19/32" (66 mm) x 1-1/4" (32 mm) and is in great condition with just some minor wear and a very small amount of crushing on one corner. It contains two 32-sided dice which are numbered 1-32, as well as "0" and "00" (the amber die is original to the box, and the clear one is just a thrown-in bonus). The original instructions are included, giving 30 different answers to one's fortune in the areas of love, luck, finance, marriage, surprise, and home; be warned, though...some of the answers are quite negative!

By the way, for actual Czech marbles you can find some links here, Original Packaging and Marbles From Outside The U. S..

(click pix to enlarge)

Vitro Shooters

Mesh bag:

Closeups:

The seller said about an inch. When asked for particulars he said, "I Measured a couple loose ones with my calipers and one was .985 inches and the other .995 inches so I would say they are 1 inch marbles."

The seller is baam!!, with 2 exclamation points. I can't leave a link to his ebay sales page. The exclamation points are messing up the html code for some reason.

Are these shooters?

Poly bags:

(source for bag on left)

Peewees:

(click to enlarge)

Block's auction description:

OTHER MACHINE MADE. Alley Agate. Lot of eleven marbles. One of the extremely rare sets of the seven peewees. Includes variety of types of yellow and white, blue and white, orange and white, light purple and white, light purple and white with metallic, light purple and white with gold stripe. This is a very rare set. These originally popped up about eight or ten years ago as part of storage find. The seller could make very few sets of these up from the marbles he found. This is one of the last ones that he had available. 3/8". Mint (9.9).

P.s., most of the marbles in the Mosaic box here are peewees too.

No. 16 carton, with slags:

(click to enlarge)

(click to enlarge)

Auction description:

BB Marbles: Original German Swirls Box SWIRL, Original box. Very rare item. This is a box of handmade German swirls. You almost never find swirls or onionskins in the original box. Strawpaper box. Label on one end that reads "GERMANY No 0 MARMORIET 1/25/15 100 SP". Contains 38 Banded Swirls. Marbles are 9/16" to 19/32", almost all Mint. Box is 3-7/8" x 2-3/4" x 2". Box is Mint (9.8).

Codeg box. (griff's box)

It says "British Made". The other Codeg pix I have say "foreign".

Would these have been made on a House of Marbles machine, or ... ?

Very rough/old draft, haven't checked the links for errors or redundancy

Marbles from outside the U.S.

See also Original Packaging

European:

Various:

I.D. Help needed (euroflames)

Ravenswood?, Purchased from ebay (large flame)

German Ox, where was ya

Help Needed Here Who? What? When? (sort of guinea-like. not sure about Vacor, but foreign sounds right)

Any Info On These Please? (lovely sparklers)

German:

Trip to Lauscha (includes info about wirepulls)

EYE CANDY! Just pics of amazing marbles! Enjoy! "From the collection of an European collector"

Peach Pretender (not CAC )

German Sparklers I, inside / beachball

CATS?, New or old shooters, or Germans?

My First Sparkler!

Really Bad Picture, But, What Are They?? (German striped transparents, comparison to slags)

tell me about this one (original pix are replaced by pelts at the time of this writing, but there are other good pix, plus good discussion)

English Swirls / Flames

All That Glitters Is Not Gold...., ...Or Aventurine Or Lutz....

Ribbon Core Or Germany Sparkler Or ??

German Marbles, Original Packaging

German Corkscrew, (well, sort of)

Red Cac?...or German Stripped Transluscent?, wicked design!

Quote about marbles with Bonux printed on them: "Bonux appears to be a Procter & Gamble western Europe detergent brand product. heres a link." (This quote is from an old thread.)

Odd Shooter Oxblood's Any Clue

Akro, German Or Somthing Else?

Czech:

Czech Fortune Telling Marbles?, on the Bay now

Czech Marbles? (pix of fortune telling marbles)

Speaking Of Czech Marbles...

An unseamly question....or two.... (See Post #7)

Czech Bullet Mold Guineas

Pre-wwii Czech. Or New Dusseldorf, Germany Bullet-molds?

British:

House Of Marbles

Made In England? (British packaging)

Portuguese:

Modern German Repro?

Asian:

Japanese:

Tiny See-through Marbles...chinese?

Marble ID (See Post #19.)

Japanese Marbles, Original Packaging

WWW: Japanese Pinch Pontil Transitionals

Interesting Glass Beads (not marbles, but I wonder if beads might ever give a clue about marble makers. perhaps some glassmaker tried both marbles and beads, but finding beads most profitable went that route for the most part and never became well known for their marbles)

Pee Wee Blue Green Alley Aventurine Swirl BLUE GREEN ADVENTURINE SWIRL (Wales type in Union bag, on p. 2)

Chinese (or generic "foreign" marbles assumed to be from China):

Website For Marble Manufacturers In China

Help Needed Here Who? What? When?

Coral Marble

Hong Kong, Taiwan, ...

Mexican: (see the Vacor Company section)

South American:

Marbles From South America

Canada (esp. marbles often found there):

Color-base Variation

See also Handmades, Transitionals and Cat's Eyes.

Speaking of guineas! Check these out!

p.s. That's a fantasy box of clays from eBay seller Barbitontallucchio. (edit: I just found out that Barbiton Tallucchio is the one who makes the Zia marbles.)

Auction description:

Box of contemporary guineas in replica classic box. The marbles are each individually hand crafted and no two are alike. Marbles are in the 9/16 inch range. Message me with any questions and Thank you for looking.

Rough draft.

This section was hit hard by loss of old threads. What do you have? We'd love to see it!

Marble-related collectibles:

Wide-ranging displays and discussions:

For The Fun Of It

Pros And Cons Of Framing Marble Art, opinions and suggestions needed, please

Marble bags:

Old Marble Bags, anybody collect these?

Tournament-related:

Marble King Trophy, Berry Pink Tournament Item

Marble company ephemera:

Postcards:

Magazines:

Ephemera: Country Gentleman, Lost All His Marbles

Newspapers:

Stamps:

Countries With Postage Stamps Of Ducks

Paintings, prints, sketches:

Marble Art

Ot Anyone Been To The Antiques Roadshow?

Figurines/Sculpture:

Look Who's Going To The La Show., darn hitch hikers

Other:

About A Million Marbles, Ebay plug (puzzle)

Someone once posted about marble themed notecards.

7-ups:

(pelt rainbos)

Thanks Edna.

Not my marbles. These were on eBay about three months ago.

Most of the small ones look good. Mossy like you say. And some of the shooters look okay. Maybe on the plain side yet sort of like the Paul Bunyans Al showed in a bag which had the note attached saying they had come from Akro. (Here's Al's bag.)

But some of them ... The blue and yellow shooters remind me of post-1990 Marble Kings, and off the top of my head I'd guess Vacor on the red/yellow ones. If they are, someone had a lot of brass pawning them off as Akros. They would have had to look around to find the matched sets of modern shooters with a sort of Akro look. Man! If I'd even contemplated backfilling a box that way, I would have lost my nerve long before I managed to complete the set.

The top row of small ones look like they might be from China, even the translucent ones. maybe.