Steph

(Jabo was founded in 1987. Their bread and butter all this time was industrial marbles -- like the marbles in paint cans. Dave joined Jabo in 1991. He had worked at Champion before that. The play marbles were not Jabo's main product line.)

Jabo started making play marbles in 1991. They closed their doors a few times up to 2007, not knowing if they would open again but they kept getting new lives. In 2007, they took a new turn. They didn't make generic play marbles anymore. They made some really fancy marbles. Investors started providing funds and sometimes special glass and sometimes creative input, and some very pretty limited run marbles started being made. Dave McCullough was still at Jabo at that time, and he was the main man who helped with those runs. Then he left Jabo. Jabo continued making contract runs. And Dave and others continued their own contract runs. There were many groups who were repeat investors. I am an honorary investor in a couple of the Tribute to Friendship runs. Dave's current operation is Dave's Appalachian Swirls. Also known as D.A.S. You'll see aventurine and oxblood and lutz, and frit on the surface, and way more than the usual number of colors from what is found in vintage marbles and early Jabos.

And now it's over $2 per marble. I wouldn't push it past that on something I wasn't sure about. Maybe someone else sees some special rare ones ... and they might not like us drawing attention to the auction. If you don't get the lot, there are some Jabo specialists around these parts who could help you assemble a very nice assortment.

There are some pretty ones. Some snazzy ones. Some big ones. If you want Jabos, and you're not trying to get vintage marbles, then I could see going up to $2 a marble on that variety.

You know they're not "vintage", right? Jabos can be beautiful, and they aren't being made anymore. But over a dollar apiece so far is getting up there, especially for marbles not identified by run. I actually have some Jabos that I'm hoping will get more than a dollar apiece when I get back to selling. But you have hit dicey range. But if you were trying to assemble a lot that looked like that, you would probably have to pay more than that. So if it's Jabo contract run marbles that you want and you don't mind not knowing which is from which contract run, I could see going up to $100.

I have good neighbors. Three neighbors who are in my friend circle. And one neighbor who is neutral. Only the neutral neighbor and one of the friends have decorations and treats for the kids. I was trying to. But it's just not happening this year. So I'm part of the problem! Well, the Halloweeny friends just bought the house on the other side of them and their mother moved into that, so maybe there will be one more trick-or-treaty house in the neighborhood. I'll think harder about doing it next year. One problem we have is that we don't quite have a front door. Our door that's closest to the front is pointing sideways and kids don't see the porchlight easily. We need to get a standing lamp to put outside that door just for Halloween.

The new pictures are making #1 look more clearly Vitro. It might be a Tiger Eye. So, on #2, no cork? Multiple colors are concentrated in one general area? Might have been more of a ribbon but it maybe it got swallowed up and folded into the seams. That base glass makes me think of Peltier and Alley as much as Akro.

Parts of the 2nd certainly have a corkscrew appearance to them ... does the ribbon do a full twist around the marble? The lighting is throwing me as noted in the other thread that I just commented on, but bases on the size and the busy-ness of the pattern, I think the 3rd could be Alley. The translucence of the base that's peeping out in the first has me wondering if it might be Akro but I don't have strong feelings about that.

Hi. It might be the bigger than usual view or something in the light, but my first thought was non-American. If American, I guess I might lean Akro, but I'm not getting that feeling at this time. Do you have any other Akro Tri-Color Agates patches you could photograph together with it?

Neato. Had to read up on those. Had seen 'em in pictures but never really thought about them.

I saw why the pearlized patch was hoped for from the group photo. I think it's a moss agate though.

^^ Vitro Tiger Eye

I think $10 is a good price for that. They appear to be common marbles. The larger marbles could be worth $10 total though. So if it's not something that you have to pay expensive shipping for, then $10 is good price for that great number of marbles. Plus, I like the other toys too.

Yay you! Good luck!

There is a LOT to learn. For what it's worth, I think I'm seeing common marbles in that group. But that's still a lot of marbles (and other toys) for the small price of $10.

Welcome. I'm not aware of PDF marble books. I look forward to hearing if anyone else knows of one. I would love to see some of the marbles that a collector can find in Portugal. Do you have any favorites?

Gonna say sweet Akro Onyx.

Solid Veiligglas. Pretty.

Oooh ... it's like solar flares I'm gonna say Veiligglas. In America I might have leaned toward Champion without thinking much about it, but knowing your location I'm feeling pretty good about Veiligglas.

More pics on the blue and yellow?

cool beans Curious now about what the buttons looked like.

I used to resist the new names. When I first started posting here, the forum leaders seemed against making up names without a very good reason, and there was rarely seen to be a good reason. I think the Peltier Angel and Citrus names may have been relatively new at the time. They were well-loved but they were exceptions. Then at AAM, the stigma against naming marbles seemed to have disappeared. Seemed some power players were involved in introducing a lot of new names I was in the surprisingly comfortable position of having to deal with the reality of an explosion of names but with no pressure to learn the names. Since I didn't post at AAM I didn't have much chance to learn the names, and so the pressure of dealing with the whole subject was off. P.s., I actually don't know when the Angel and Citrus names were adopted. Just a vague sense that back in 2005 or 2006 there was something exotic about the names. An excitement that felt new-ish. Might be fun to get some history on when the now-established names were introduced into the lingo. The Vitro Elite had been relatively newly named when I came onto the scene, and it seemed the name was catching on. The Elites were especially colorful Tri-Lites, but the Tri-Lite name wasn't well-known at the time. The Elite name caught on well enough to be featured in an article in the WVMCC newsletter in 2003. Then the Vitro company name became better known and the Elite name fell into disuse.

I posted this in another thread today. I'm adding it here, with permission from Joanne Singleton. This is sample box of early Masters is correctly filled. (I have also added this box to the original post in the thread, because I want it to be easy to find.)

No. Not a Cloudy. Cloudy is a single-color marble. That site is wrong. Somehow the big names in collecting (e.g., Alan Basinet and Bob Block) got way off track with Master's basic style definitions. Part of the messy evolution of figuring out the history of this little child's toy. And then after the first few years of production, Master marbles didn't match their own style definitions. Their marbles became less distinct and I don't think we can really figure out from the boxes they showed up in what Master would actually have called them in those later days. Collectors mess with their own heads trying to figure out if something is a Sunburst or some other name that they picked up from the mistaken definitions on Alan's or Bob's site. This is why I just say "Master" if it does turn out to be a Master and doesn't fit the original definitions. This sample case posted by Joanne Singleton is filled correctly with early Masters. But the percentage of marble collectors who recognize a Cloudy and know its Master name is very low.

We have a winner!