spara50

I have two of those, very cool marbles! Craig

Greg, I never get tired of hearing that one. Out of your 442 posts, I think at least 350 say that somewhere in them.

Yeah, step into the 21st century and increase profits by 50%.

Yeah, didn't mean it was made by Vitro, just had Vitros used in the making of it. Just a cool marble related item. Craig

I had not seen one of these before. Just came in from England. Souvenir from Australia. Not sure the date, maybe 60's or 70's? Craig

So everyone is like me so far, haven't seen anything like them to compare them too. Really unique for sure. Wish they were in better shape. @bigtee0 = I get emails asking for help once in awhile, this was one of them. Bulgaria, how weird?!

Thanks Hansel, makes sense here. It looks like that is exactly what they are doing. Wow, sulpher smell, that would have been an awful place to work! Craig

Got a curious email with these pictures attached from Bulgaria. Look like some amazing marbles if they weren't so rough. Has anyone seen anything like these? Some have a guinea look, some have a striped transparent look, some of the clear look like a cobra inside. Interesting group for sure. Any comments welcome. Craig

Hansel, do they reference it for any certain topic? Clays, agates, etc.? I need to look and see if I have that book or not. Thanks, Craig

The ad shows the boys trading marbles. The Japanese 4 vanes all look identical with 4 colors. In order for there to be trading, it seems you would have to be using Vitro, MK, Peltier that had different colors in each marble. Haha...man, sometimes it's best just to lurk. I didn't mean to make a big deal out of this.

Thanks Al. To clarify my post, the ones at the beginning in the pile are obviously Japanese. The ones on the cardboard cat cutout in the eyes, etc. look single vane like Peltier. And in the second commercial, in order for kids to be trading colors, they couldn't have all been Japanese. Great display of the sleeves. Best I've seen yet. Craig

All Killa!

Don, I thought the same exact thing. The cateyes on the cat display and all he shows look Peltier single vane. Plus, they talk about trading favorite colors. Japanese would have all been the same colors. There are one or two more variaitons of this ad on the site. One is for the 10 pack mini boxes with marbles. Craig

Wonder how long it took before they were shooting them at each other? 2 minutes I would guess.

Decided to do them in bronzes now? Look better than the silver ones.

Has anyone seen one of these before? I don't think I have. Pretty neat! Craig

Nice find! Love this stuff. Here is another from the same site with the kids shooting marbles. http://archive.org/details/dmbb02014

Great group! I'm with Dave, the last group is amaziing. Craig

After all the work to get it to look like it was, I will probably leave it. When the old site went down, I was the one who put the site up that is out there now. I designed his graphics, the running rabbit logo, etc. But we didn't know about the archives then, or it might have been redone. Some day, maybe his domain name can be forwarded to this one. I used to have his login info for the new site, but can't find it. Glad everyone is enjoying it. I learned a ton on that site when starting colllecting. Craig

To all, As a tribute to Alan I have spent some time with the web archives reconstructing the old Alans Marble Connection from 2006. I have tried to keep the site as much as the same as possible, with just minor HTML changes to make things run smoother. It is hosted on my website for now. I hope eveyone will pass the word along that it's back up and running. http://www.buymarble...ealan/home.html I will try and attempt to update the site with new descriptions, new marble names and types that have been discovered since 2006 to keep the legacy going. Hope everyone enjoys it! Craig Snider www.buymarbles.com PS. This is the first day up and running, so please let me know if you find broken links, etc. so I can get them fixed! Thanks!

Never seen that one. Wow! That's fantastic! Craig

Thanks everybody! It was worth the effort for sure. Funny thing is, who ever sees one of these empty? Haha..once it's filled up, your eyes will only be drawn to the marbles first, and the text areas second. You really just see the edges of all the inserts. @Mike, the clearie side is actually a yellow paper. If the green is there, all the clearies look black. It's yellow in the originals. No, I don't have the auction before pics, but I have the ones above I took before I started. Craig

A few close ups of the details.

Some were wondering who bought the Akro Salemans Sample boxes on eBay awhile back. Well, it was this crazy person. I have finished the restoration on the boxes and thought I would post a few pictures. One surprise that came out of the purchase of the two boxes was the seller contacted me and said he actually had one more box. So I bought that one too and now have three boxes completed. Here are some before pictures. I removed the inserts completely from all three boxes and started with a clean box. I used as many of the existing inserts as I could in one of the boxes. Thanks to Art Bowles who brought one of his Salesman boxes to the Canton show in Feb. and let me take photos and measurements, it would have been really tough without that. I made over 100 inserts for all three boxes. Each hand measured to be exactly the same as the original, cut out of cardboard, paper applied, scored and glued into boxes. Many of the boxes have riser inserts that each have to be made the same way. The green paper I recreated in Adobe Photoshop until it matched almost perfectly. Then printed out over 40 sheets on the color laser printer. The inserts with text I also made in Photoshop. This was a painstaking labor of love for sure, and has taken about 5 or 6 weeks to complete. These are just some quick pictures, and are a much brighter than the box is in person. Once the marbles are in the boxes, it's going to be fantastic looking. Hope you enjoy the pics. Craig

Not really sure about the clay. The translation is very sketchy. Buy it does look like they are working on stone, and usually stone cubes are ground into round shapes. Maybe the coloring is dyed agates or stones? Not sure, wish I could get a more accurate translation. I might try to scan the document into one of my form programs which will let me copy and paste it to translate.