Steph

I missed this thread when it first appeared but I have an original bag of foreign sparklers many with oxblood which is from France. I will try to take some pics and post them if there is still interest in this thread.

S

Too cool! Original packaging is da bomb!

I thought I had seen some reference to a gift card explaining how an Akro box could be both marked and unmarked. But then I couldn't find it.

I simply hadn't looked hard enough. I've found it now though. It is in an image linked by Dan in his post here.

(click to enlarge)

From the discussion about an unbranded box of "glassies":

We have been watching this auction... funny, Akro always marked their boxes 'akro' somewhere, even the little gift boxes were stamped. I did email the seller and asked if it said Akro anywhere and the reply was a simple 'no'.

we dont think it's akro, but possibly Vitro.

opinions?

auction link

just a little update.. talked to Roger Hardy and he agrees, akro marked their boxes. He's never seen this type box, or any jobber type box that was not marked, including the shipping boxes. He said with it being marked glassies and nothing as to maker, he wouldn't say it was akro either.

What do you think about this box?

Hansel bought it for $995. eBay listing

The seller's description: "Up for sale is an circa 1960s excellent Set of marbles in original box with marble bag.Boxs & marbles are unmarked .A very nice set in excellent condition."

I suppose the "unmarked" part could have been referring to condition. But if it had said Akro somewhere, wouldn't the seller have noticed it and mentioned it? From the "circa 1960's" comment, it sounds as if the seller really didn't see any clues to the origin of the box.

Sweet story ... and all that eye candy ... and what do I do?

Jump right to the plain red and yellow patches.

(That is a gorgeous lot. I feel lucky to see them all. Thanks!)

I'm pretty sure Lloyd was referring to the one you pictured.......

So, this would be Brady's Turbine "Apple"

Wow on the Ray Laub!

So, not wanting to harp ... just to pin it down ... this Turbine "Apple" is the one which Lloyd says is "old but not a birdcage"? That's surprising.

Yep, that's the marble my son Brady sold on eBay a while back.

Hello Lloyd.

To which marble are you referring? The one which was at the other end of the ebay auction link in the old thread, right? Not any of the marbles pictured in this thread. (right?)

Thank you.

Steph

I am suprised to see the quotation marks for emphasis in that era (I can be ignorant but curious). Heck, just speaking out loud

Nice catch! I love running across these different little touches from different times.

WOW, I dunno Steph.... I don't remember the marble in the auction... Maybe Lloyd does??

But, if it's that one in the picture, we were talkin' apples an' oranges.... There was so much talk about the whole Birdcage thing, it's tough to know who referenced what....

Chinese apples: 1930's. Settled. (imveryho)

Modern oranges: Ray Laubs?

(Not able to find any definite pix but I think I'm reading that he made something known as a bird cage)

Well, you showed some old ones in this thread. And, yeah, in the Lloyd-related discussion you were talking about old marbles. I see that now. So, not to discount the general merit of input from Rick and David . . . . . . help! what emoticon should I use ... oh no!!! . . . . . . (ahem) ...

anyway, I think you've set me straight on the context here.

Thanks Sue!

And so, though there wasn't a photo in the thread which said there were only 5 birdcages made, there was a photo named "ebirdcage1.jpeg", in another thread. And this other thread linked back to the thread which said only 5 birdcages were made.

This is the photo named "ebirdcage1.jpeg":

It was David's, and as he said it looks contemporary, so that reinforced my guess that folks might have been talking about some really hot but still modern marble type.

Cool ephemera, that!

I'm not finding the allusion I thought I most specifically remembered in connection with birdcages, so maybe I'm mistaken about it, but in my memory the statement goes something like, "isn't it funny that supposedly only five were ever made and suddenly two appear for sale on eBay?"

Edited:

Here's the post I was remembering: Post #8 in the thread "Bird Cage? I don't think so...".

If only 5 were ever made, I guessed that maybe the discussion was about some small but famous series of marbles created by a contemporary glass artist.

To my knowledge, there are NO paperweights that were ground down to look like marbles... At least, I've never seen or heard of one....

Quick clarification here. When you said "they are authentic, made as marbles and not ground-down paperweights", it still hadn't crossed my mind that someone might turn a literal paperweight into an orb. So, I thought you were using "ground-down" simply to stress the flat-bottomed property of paperweights.

I now see that didn't make sense in your sentence construction. That's how I was using the term though.

Sue, your 1930's date was just for the literal ground-down paperweights?

Thanks Jane. Thought so, but I wondered if maybe Art was right and someone had to squeeze the tabs real tight!

John, may I just say Wow!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and, oh yes, Thanks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

No, it's hand made but you have to squeeze real real hard to get it closed. Art

I can't tell if you're being serious or not, Art! LOL

did i mention nice pic????????

Thanks Steve!

( I wondered if you'd recognize it after all these decades. )

(Folks, here's where I got the pic of the steelie: flea mkt goodies.)

Is a steelie like this machine-made?

What is a birdcage, in the context of marbles. There are some really famous/controversial ones, right?

Are there old ones and contemporary ones?

I've seen many allusions to them but that seems to be all.

Douglas Wiltraut's

"Looking At The Moon"

the story of the painting ...

from trying out somthing

from Birds and Bees 101

FANTABULOUS!

What I wouldn't give to find them for so cheap . I wonder what the equivalent price would be, not in secondary market, but rather today's dollar...

-Brad

Just for fun, let's put the date on the ad as 1925.

Based on average prices of average items bought by average Americans, $1 in 1925 would buy the same as $11.74 now. . . . (See What is a dollar worth?)

So, to get a dozen of those Favorite boxes, instead of the 74¢ it would take in 1925, you'd need to fork over $8.69 this year.

That's wholesale, right?

That is so fun! Do you know what year that ad is from?

Patry Denton's

"Oh no, not my best ....."

This is the third marble painting Patry has shown at LOM in recent days! Here are the links:

Games of "Keepers" (Post #3)

Lucky Marble

Oh no, not my best .....

this post from Land of Marbles

Note of potential interest: the land of marbles thread discusses blacklighting sulfides. Antique ones will have a mild to moderate vaseline glass glow. CA sulphides won't.

Also of potential interest: there are a couple of dramatic sets of before-and-after-polishing pix in that thread.

That was a look back ... just a couple of notes I wanted to add for my own future reference.

Now, I'm really interested in Sue's idea for highjacking the thread. Lloyd, how invasive are the tests ACRN performs? How conclusive? (and what would it take to get an exotic into their hands? )

Thanks, Jane. Without a name, the only category I knew to put it in was "How to take great pictures"!