Nantucketdink

Size?

Galen-I have always known you were the real deal. You are in it for the marbles. There are different marbles in my keepers box, but whatever price I paid for each one was worth it to me.

I still have trouble grasping the financial part that seems to drive so many people involved with marbles. Does the money drive most people involved with marbles? I have fallen head over heels in love with collecting machine made marbles. Are most other people involved with marbles really just trying to make money by selling them? I hope there are many other people out there who actually like the marbles themselves and are not just concerned with whether they are making a good investment. Everybody says to buy what you like and spend what they are worth to you...does anybody else heed the advice? If you do then you can never go wrong. The people who bought hundreds of JERK marbles at $5 bucks apiece and are now upset that other people are buying the same marbles for less money-what were they going to do with them? The investors were the jokers who had the marbles made. Are the marbles they bought not worth the $5 apiece to them anymore? They didn't heed the two recommendations in the marble world then. Does anybody recommend investing in marbles as a way to make a lot of money?

In 2007, 25 pound boxes of Classic JABOs were being sold for $20. The 5/8" marbles cost less than 1 cent each. The Classic 3/4" marbles were selling for 2 cents each before the contract runs. The 1" marbles were selling for a whopping 4 cents each in 2007. I don't think JABO prices have declined. Contract run type cases sell for about $300 per 20/25 pounds these days if you can get them or choose to be part of a run.

Take a look at what Columbusrockhound gets for his JABOs. He routinely gets over $100 for individual contract run JABOs from different buyers. I don't mean that he gets that for every one, but it seems like he gets that for at least one weekly.

Those 5/8" aquarius marbles aren't contract run marbles and are post McCullough. I believe they sold for $75 per case a year ago directly to people on ebay. There are 2500 of them in a 25 pound box. Cases of similar JABO marbles in 2007 were sold for $20 per 25 pound box. None of this relates to the contract run JABO marble prices.

Are they sending them out with IOUs these days? Are you asking if a marble goon will show up at your front door in a few months if you don't pay the bill? Personally, I wouldn't want to find out anybody's skills around recouping their due funds. People do what they have to do to get money owed to them. You did ask about credit ability, right?

...and to answer the original question, I would think that the seller does not measure his marbles with calipers or circle templates. It is obvious from the sizes listed in his listings.

Gnome-Bob will read your posts eventually so please be respectful. Very few marble sellers accurately ID all the mibs they sell.

It's pretty scary when you actually figure out how much you have spent on your own marble collection. 25K sounds like a newbie collection to me.

You would imagine most people would notice the size difference off the bat.

I believe those are JABOs. Thanks for sharing.

Does anybody out there have an identical pair of machine made swirls? I mean the pattern is an exact match between 2 (or more) marbles? Exact means exact, not close or similar.

I think rare and hard to find are very different terms. When I hear "Rare" I am thinking about a marble that was produced in extremely limited quantities and/or very few are still known to exist. HTF is a very subjective term to me that means in my personal experience I have had great difficulty finding an example of a particular marble whether or not it is a rare speciman in reality. HTF means very few are available to buy to me. There could be thousands of HTF examples in strong hands under lock and key and they would still be HTF if very few were for sale.

My uncle Bill removed the lead shot from a shotgun shell and replaced them with a marble. He rigged the shell so it would shoot upward when slammed to the ground. He then proceeded to slam it to the floor on the first floor of my grandmother's house. She had a nice little skylight that went through the ceiling/floor of the second floor and out the tin roof of their house. I heard this story numerous times while growing up, but I doubt anybody else has ever used marbles to make a two story sky light in their mother's house.

2003 JABO classic. Were the swirl type classics actually sold at Walmart?

I would imagine that one ended up a lot smaller than originally planned.

They are 2004 JABOs

Joanne Argabrite and Jack Bogard, the JA and BO in JABO are still there producing marbles.

I use the term "cullet marble" to describe a marble that is going to be remelted into another marble. The piece of glass is already in the shape of a marble, but it is going to be remelted and used to make a hopefully better marble.

I believe the word "tankwash" is also being used by some people specifically in reference to Jabo marbles to define a specific amount of how much glass was put through the machine during a session of marble making. For example, a "run" of Jabo marbles would define a ton or more of glass used in a session of making marbles, a "tankwash" would define 201-1999 pounds of glass put through the machine during a session of making marbles, and a "test" would define 200 or less pounds of glass put through the machine during a specific marble making session. This terminology is not widespread yet, but quantifiable definitions of marble terms specific to Jabo marble making would be benefitial to future Jabo collectors. Quantifiable definitions of all applicable marble terms would be helpful to all collectors and sellers. People jump all over sellers for misusing terms like "rare," "vintage," and "antique" and yet the same people won't put a number to go with a definition.