Plutonianfire

Please see attached photos of what I believe are three Cairo swirls. Caramel is my own descriptor given the color.

There are a couple things I do to get around reflections. First, I use the IPhone flash in a fairly dark room with shades drawn. if reflections are an issue using the flash, I’ll hold a strong mini-flashlight next to the marble with one hand and take the photo with the other hand. Third, sometimes zooming in or zooming out a bit improves the quality of the photo.

I use a flash

What are the types in each of the seven compartments in the far left column from top to bottom?

Please. You completely misinterpreted my overly dry sense of humor. Obviously, all of the qualifiers and caveats that you pointed out are highly relevant. Just to be able to do the analysis that you did is amazing! I couldn’t come up with something like that even if I spent a full year doing background research.

I'm not sure it would be so difficult. There are some savants who lurk on the marble forums. For example, over on the All About Marbles website someone who goes by the name of CHEESE showed how it was possible to make quick work of every marble house in the country using the single variable of marble size to identify the maker of a particular marble. I believe the title of the analysis was Marble sizes and how they relate to IDs.

IPhone SE - 12 MP with 5x Zoom and excellent Autofocus

Wow! Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about.

Please see attached photos.

Totally understand. When you start looking at human behavior, statistical models explode, high order interaction effects abound and it’s often difficult to draw any conclusions at all. Some 30 to 40 years ago, I attempted to answer questions like who might be willing to donate bone marrow, who was most likely to progress from asymptomatic HIV positive to full blown AIDS, and what novel risk factors might exist to facilitate prevention of cancers that science knew little about. Those models offered insight but the issue was simply that of prolonging human life. https://news.cancerconnect.com/non-hodgkins-lymphoma/red-wine-consumption-associated-with-reduced-risk-of-non-hodgkin-s-lymphoma https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1046/j.1537-2995.1986.26486262738.x https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/A-90-kDa-protein-serum-marker-for-the-prediction-of-Briggs-Natoli/06412fe329202d3b40d36a7e5526858cf6dcc2df Nevertheless, with the collective expertise on this website, it should be possible to develop some relatively simple approaches that would make marble identification much easier. I took the initiative to develop an admittedly crude paradigm for identifying blue swirls. But this could be refined by input from those who actually have a good understanding of the subject area.

“Size, bubbles, cold rolls, orange peel, ribbon width uniformity, tunnelling, metallic, UV response, striations, cut marks, machinery marks, tracers, opalescence, ribbon behavior, blowholes, mottling, iridescence, frit, aventurine, shapes, skips, opacity, fractures, what color it is that fractured even, and on and on are all things to be considered when making an ID.” I agree up to a point. However, if you could develop a multiple regression model that simultaneously considered all of the variables that you mentioned, and the model selected only the most significant , you would likely end up with no more than four or five variables that contributed independently.

The seams tend to get camouflaged because the bright blue swirl lines end at the seams. Please see a couple more photos that may show seams more clearly. First two photos show continuation of seam on same marble. Seam is less clear on second marble. polished? Both marbles 0.59-0.60 in.

Using the criterion of blue swirls with thick, bright blue swirl lines that tend to end in a sea of white, the photos below are for two marbles in my collection that meet the ALLEY criterion.

As per the previous thread on using an empirical approach to identify the maker of a blue swirl, it was noted that ALLEY made blue swirls with thick, bright blue swirl lines that tended to end in the middle of nowhere on a white base. The two photos below are known ALLEY marbles from the Joe Marble web site linked to Marble Connection. Each marble shows thick, bright blue swirl lines that tend to end in a sea of white on the marble base.

Using the criterion of blue swirls with thick, bright blue swirl lines that tend to end at the marble seams, the photos below are for two marbles in my collection that meet the RAVENSWOOD criterion.

As per the previous thread on using an empirical approach to identify the maker of a blue swirl, it was noted that RAVENSWOOD made blue swirls that looked a lot like ALLEY. Namely, thick bright blue swirl lines. However, the RAVENSWOOD swirl lines tended to end at the marble seams, whereas the ALLEY lines ended in the middle of nowhere on a white base. The two photos below are known RAVENSWOOD marbles from the Joe Marble web site linked to Marble Connection. Each marble shows thick, bright blue swirl lines that tend to end at the marble seams.

Using the criterion of blue swirls with thin, dark blue wavy lines accompanied by unique small swirl pieces separate from the primary swirl lines, the photos below are for two marbles in my collection that meet the Cairo criterion.

As per the previous thread on using an empirical approach to identify the maker of a West Virginia blue swirl, it was noted that CAIRO made blue swirls with thin, dark blue wavy lines accompanied by unique small swirl pieces separate from others. The two photos below are from the Joe Marble web site linked to Marble Connection … and show the characteristic Cairo features.

The unidentified blue swirl marbles are down here:

Included below are photos of two very similar blue swirl marbles for which I am going to try to identify the manufacturer using an empirical approach. STEP 1 - The first step will be to define blue swirl. With regard to the two marbles of interest, I am going to arbitrarily define blue swirl as the presence of discrete, wavy blue lines on the surface of a marble with an opaque white base. No colors other than blue and white are allowed. STEP 2 - The second step will be to qualitatively compare blue swirl characteristics of our unidentified marbles with characteristics of blue swirl marbles produced by each major toy marble making company using reputable online galleries of marble photos (eg, EBay and similar sites will not be used). 1. AKRO - made blue swirl marbles with Corkscrew and Spiral Onyx/Snake patterns. Not a close match. ALLEY AGATE - made blue swirl marbles with and without "flame" patterns. The Alley Agate blue swirl marbles without a flame pattern appear to be close matches. ALOX did not make blue swirls but made marbles with white swirls on a blue base CAIRO made blue swirls with thin, dark blue wavy lines accompanied by unique small swirl pieces separate from others. Not a close match. Our unidentified marbles differ in that they are bright blue and not dark blue lines, the blue lines are thicker, and there are no small swirl pieces that stand alone. CHAMPION made blue swirls with numerous blue wavy lines that are interconnected. Not a close match. Our unidentified marbles have blue lines that are not interconnected and the density of coverage is less. HEATON made blue swirls with thin, wispy blue lines. Not a close match. JABO did not make blue swirls JACKSON – made blue swirls with very thick dark blue lines. Not a close match. KOKOMO didn't make blue swirls MARBLE KING didn't make blue swirls but did make marbles with patches of blue on a white base MASTER MARBLE did not make blue swirls RAVENSWOOD made blue swirls that were similar to Alleys. However, the Ravenswood blue swirl lines end abruptly at the seams, unlike the Alley blue swirl lines. PELTIER - blue swirl lines end at the seam lines and the seam lines are very conspicuous. Not a close match. VITRO - made a blue swirl known as "Eight Fingers". Lines end at seams and they go around the marble in circles. Only a partial match Conclusion: The unidentified marbles were made by Alley Agate.