ManofKent

Going back to this I'm now leaning more Champion, but hopefully there's a swirl expert around!

#4 and #23 might be Vitro 'Helmets' (Tri-Lites) from the right angle.

Agreed on #12, #7, #2 and #10 (and probably 1#, but it looks slightly odd). #16 might be another one? #11 Vitro Blackie? #3 Vitro All Red?

I'm tempted to just say West Virginia Swirl and run away I'm seeing some ribbon diving which points towards Ravenswood, but I'm not at all sure.

Not a 'Snotty' - oddly they're a greenish/yellow colour Red & White swirls are a pain - just about everyone made them. I'd lean Alley, or maybe Heaton.

Alley would be my first thought, but I'm no swirl expert.

Swirls aren't my strong point but it might be Champion - they certainly produced swirls in that colour, and the ribbons look right.

stunning examples - I particularly love the blue.

It looks pretty similar to the 'Experimental Corkscrew' on the West Virginia Marble Collectors Club pages to me.

Do the bands definitely corkscrew?

It depends what you're after and where you buy from $60 will get you 20lbs of nice but plain marbles from a bulk seller with very little searching. Fancier marbles will cost you more... I suspect you can buy in bulk directly from either Vacor, Marble King or one of the Chinese manufacturers if you want to take a gamble on current lines increasing in value. I suspect most dealers buy from auctions, I also suspect there are very few dealers who would consider themselves wealthy.

I'm sure ebay listings are getting worse of late. Ebay UK is full of 'Victorian' Cats Eyes, and on the .com site 'Akro Agate' seems to be a synonym for marble.

Thanks Al.

Couldn't put it any better. Season's Greetings to all.

I'm not sure I can get much more frustrated with patches than I do with swirls I don't think there's going to be anything that special in there - It looks like a typical bulk lot - moderately common stuff, padded out with lots of Conquerors and seeded with a handful of nicer marbles to catch buyers eyes. From my point of view the moderately common stuff is hard to find in the UK, and with the ridiculous cost of shipping marbles to the UK - three or four marbles that I might have bought individually would have cost me as much to post as the 300 odd did...

About 300 odd patches arrived last night from an ebay auction. About half are Conquerors or one type or another (more than I'd hoped for but I'd guessed from the photos there were a fair few), but that still leaves over a hundred marbles to identify and as I pulled out random ones I was struck by how few I could immediately identify. I've got a busy Christmas!

Lovely Sunbursts folks. Good question on the variety Steph, and not one I have an answer to. I love the way there's so much colour , yet they're never gaudy.

Does that bag's header narrow it down any further to you? I'd have said earlier rather than later but I'm no expert on bags.

Thanks Al - I'm guessing from the header that's fairly early 70's. I'd have labelled much of the content as All Reds, if I'saw them loose, but it's interesting the bag is non-descriptive.

Nice - I've not come across that combination 'in the wild'.

Thanks both - I did wonder about Type 4 Tiger's, but the white is base glass rather than a veneered ribbon, and I think the Type 4's were veneered white on opaque white. Not that it's a reliable guide, but they came with a bunch of All Reds (non-blackline) that looked 50's/60's colouration and both vaned and very whispy cages (in pale shades), so I was leaning pre-Gladding. Could be later and just mixed together of course. I don't think they're dug - the veneer fracture damage looks like some kind of problem in the cooling (the camera exaggerates what they look like in the hand). No other colour combinations in the group.

Do these have a 'name' beyond being vitro brushed patches?

Generally yes - but you do get odd ones where the black is so far from the equator that it pretty much forms a pole patch - although looking at Al's photo the same thing happens with some Black Line All Reds...

To me it looks more like a wavy Blackie than an All-Red.

Nice Christmas present :-)