marblemansion

Thanks Felicia - that is a warm thought - one of my older daughters has some interest in marbles - and my intention was to pass them along to my future generations - I have them all tagged and labeled, so that may be the way to go. Bill

those are pretty neat - pretty rare to have so many all together and so many color varieties.

Thanks Steph - farmville is more fun than marble collecting at the moment....I just haven't been able to get the photos to get them to market - maybe I will change my mind before they all get sold - doubt it though.

for David, No - I was never informed it was you - Steph kept you covered, so I never knew. But I do appreciate the apology, thanks. For the general readers following this thread few or many... I really give very little thought to Pavcraz or most sellers who porn-mote their marble wares with half nekked names and fancy letters...I used to search through their crap looking for real beauties & collectibles among their BS of mis-names, mis-spellings and ill use of manufacture names like Ackro, MF Chistiansons and Pealtier as a way of covering their tracks. (ie "I never claimed it was a Peltier") but its gotten real old and real irritating as Jabos continue to roll off the assembly lines by the thousands and then get sold as real antiques and broaden the market to the point of no return with another run almost every month. The definition of what Peltier, MFC, Akro, Christensen created back in the early 1900's has been morphed and modified within the collecting community to allow beautiful examples of antique "wannabees" to be sold in the community as a "real no doubt about it concensus antique". Sure its beautiful, sure its one of kind, sure its kinda like a Peltier, BUT IT AINT A PELTIER! There is no provenance to substantiate these new claims and they have ruined the market. If you want to collect it - be my guest, yah its a neat marble - but don't dump it on the antique market!!!! ....whoops too late - and too many fakes to recover the values now. The collecting community has no bounds & no borders to reign in these fakes - and in fact the community itself seems to enjoy revelling in the expanding market because it lends cred to their own questionable wannabees....lol sorry - blah blah blah - I won't bore everyone any further.

yeah - well - I figure if someone gets out of the collecting biz - its only great for all of you. I just need to get the time together and archive my collection in photos and post them up. Just don't quite know how to sell them - I won't Ebaybunk.

I believe we all did that once and it did nothing....besides - if it wasn't Pavcraz it would be someone else. On top of that there are several others among the community of collectors that pass off BS as real and then even boast about it and they are tolerated and even supported by some in the community while others despise them and it creates very little fondness for collecting. I wouldn't pay the 4 - 5 hundred bucks for a real diamond graded "Chrissy" or a "Navarre" from anyone of you without the provenance to prove its value (and there is none), too much risk involved that I would be buying a fake - and as for collecting just because "you like them" (one hand on hip with a limp wristed wave swinging my hip just a nudge) I have plenty of beautiful marbles that I bought for that reason, but the taste that fakes have left has tainted the desire completely. I tell you true - I bought a high end bag - supposedly an original bag from a well named trusted collector - I bid top dollar to win the item - and I thought nothing of it at the time. The bag arrived - I added it to my collection, happy as a lark - then a few weeks later I was going through and resorting and came across the bag comparing it to another I had purchased previously and realized the bag was not geniune. There was nothing I could pin on the seller. There was no way of taking a photo and showing it was a fake - I just know - its been faked - there is just something new about the threads, the header, the staples, ...the marbles are all real - but the bag is a fake. This put marble collecting into category of discomfort that I found extremely unattractive, and have found less and less attractive as the years progress. More bickering - more Jabos looking and passing as antiques, more and more rewrite of historical data that brings even more questions into light. Sorry - I like a defined collection. Something with firm parameters. Marbles have lost that. I know you are gonna call me crazy - some of you are gonna email Lou and Steph and call me pavcraz or worse - have at it.

yuck!

this guy and a multitude of others is why I will be selling my collection.

I dunno - I have only seen about 5 of these - and none of the others were as as nice condition as this one....maybe everyone has a Peltier Pearlized Patch in their collection.

Steph when you get back on - make me a friend on farmville! Me too Lou. ya - the only problem is when you say stupid things there - the entire FB community gets a note about it...LOL Yeah - it takes some getting used to for sure. Dang - only 23...sheesh - and they are still growing I found an old college friend I had not heard from in about 20 years - its been great to catch up with him...

Yep me too - I keep up with family alot and I am doing the farmville thing - its pretty interesting - but I need more friends to keep the farm alive and kickin...

dirty rollers cause the imperfections from what I understand....plus most of the ones in the boxed sets are hand culled and only the nicest smoothest ones go in the boxes; while the ones with folds, pits, cracks or out of round are set aside for later sale as a "unique examples" - when really they would have ended up in the diggings 30 years from now if they were at the MK factory. I used to find everything from footballs, to eggs, weavers, halvsies, double ingots, in a case of Jabos - never saw those in the MK cases. Of course there won't be any diggings in 30 years at Jabo since the really bad glass gets recycled I am guessing - not buried in the ground.

Just curious where you all as a group fit into the latest social network medium.

Oh yeah One of my favorites

Yep that one is mine - but I accidently de-adminstrated myself - I have emailed FB to reinstate me - everyone is welcome to join in and post their bestest photos and brag about there favorites fro everyone to see! There have been some really neat and unusual posts lately - the elephant marbles are the coolest!

let me tell you how I really feel.... EBAY SUCKS!

Wahhahahah David! You are hilarious - have you forgotten that I have been collecting for almost my entire life and spent 5 years buying and selling Mega Marbles?? I have probably had more Vacor marbles pass through my hands in those 5 years than you can even imagine! My estimate would be somewhere over a million - I have seen and sold marbles made by Vacor that fooled even the best collectors - I used to post a game called "GARBLES" - anyone remember it? I would post photos of ten marbles and ask everyone to send in a list of ID's - whoever got them all correct - I would send a monthly prize - I would commonly put in a Vacor as a trick marble - and most of the time - no one got it. I have seen a Vacor orange and black "Bengal Tiger" that you would swear on a stack of Bibles was a Peltier. I have seen Vacor "Roosters" that you would never know the diffence from a Akro slag. same with Neptunes (blue slags) same with the Serpents - (Peltier Superman), or the Van Gogh - (Peltier Cub Scout) Oh yeah - they are not commonly mistaken - but I KNOW they are out there because I saw them one by one pass through my hands into my collectors bags when I filled them - I handled them - and it pissed me off the no end to see them get sold on Ebay. So don't give me the crap that I cant tell the difference old man. I would love to just sit a watch you cull through 2000 mixed WV swirls that have 20 Vacors in them and have you pick out 20 Vacors...just because it would be such a pain in yor arse. I would put money on this one - you show me your entire collection of all of your WV swirls and I bet I can find one marble of what you call a WV swirl - ONE that is in your collection now - that I can find a near replica if I had the same number of Vacor Old Fashioneds to cull through as you have in your collection. If you have 2,000 in your collection I get to cull 2,000 Vacors - done deal? Remember not WV swirls of your choice - but out of your entire WV collection - care to take the dare? LOL I found more than that on a weekly basis running Marble Mansion.

just go down to your local five and dime and buy all the bags they have of Old Fashioned - mix em in with your current collection and enjoy! You can triple your "WV Swirls" collection in just minutes!

Great reading all of your comments - Hilarity to you all - thanks!

Yep those are nice pelts - that is one style I have not seen made by contemps - nice find. The yellow one could be anything.

AKro corks - ok MK Patch ribbon patch from the 50's - ok Master Marbles have a contemporary knock off - marketed as Imperials or new toy marbles - pick up several new bags at your local Wal Mart - its extremely hard to tell the difference between these new marbles and a vintage Master Marble - and these have been creeping into the vintage market for years now, spoiling vintage collections. The majority of the so called West Virginia Swirls - heaton, ravenswood, cairo, swirls are nearly worthless - the new market is flooded with look a likes and as for MFC and CAC - so very few were made and so very many are on the market - there is no way to know what you are buying is original - there is very little original stuff to compare to to know, and yet huge claims from better known collectors have left everyone digging through piles of marbles to find the "one" - LOL I was sent a CAC for comparison purposes by a collector when I first opened Marble Mansion - he swore it was a CAC - he had no provenance as to its origins - only his word - but to this day I cannot tell it apart from a common everyday marble. as for Jabos - well imho Jabos have become a pain in the ass to collect - so many varieties and so many different runs and no way to keep up with them unless you are absolutely sold out to collect jabos - lots of space on your collection shelves would be eaten up by even a modest collection of current run jabos. They used to be fun when they had a single run every fall and you could collect a set and date them - not now - by the time you get a set together - there are 3 new runs out already that are as different as a duck from a dog while at the same time are as similar as a blackbird to a crow - confusing as hell. Add in Mike Rowe burning his ass while melting in a little gold lutz and voila - you have everone searching though piles of worthless crap for the "one" again. LOL

Yep that thought has occurred to me - but the entire hobby especially the vintage end has been something of great interest to me for year and years - I started with the marbles my Grandfather - (a railroad worker from Kansas who grew up in the 1920's) gave me when I was just 20 years old....been at it ever since - just seems to have lost its luster....not to the point of dumping them in a river though, and If I threw them into my backyard pisa would show up with a flashlight and keep my dogs up at night...LOL

yeah LOL buy yourself a 500 count bulk bag of Mega Marbles "Old Fashioned" style - you will be astonished how much these resemble vintage stock marbles and they have been getting snookered into the vintage WV marble market for years now:

Yeah I have had fun over the years collecting basics - never really dumped more than 150 bucks into any one marble - after all they are only a wad of glass. Tried my damndest to get a MK watermellon - never found one, at least not one I could afford. Tried like the dickens to get Peltier Golden Rebels and galaxies and never even saw one for sale. Now making matters worse - fakes abound and its really hard to put out couple hundred bucks for a marble that might be a fake. For instance - I always really desired to collect a Peltier Comic box and add the Comic marbles one by one - but there ain't no way I am gonna pay the prices those things go for now, especially when I see fakes and repros all over the market driving the value down. I have purchased several original bags of various sorts and when they arrived and I get my hands on them - I am immediatley suspect of the nice header card and clean mesh on the bag - I mean they look original but are they really??? They have original marbles in them but there is no way to know... So then I bought some with older looking header cards and they arrive and I am left with - well the seller just made it "look" old - You post a photo of a marble and you get 6 different responses to its origins. I think some of my despair comes from handling thousands of Vacors and finding some here and there that could just be complete knock offs of older marbles - especially of slags, Ravenswoods and other WV swirls. My favorites to this day are still the Josh Simpson "earth" marbles along with David Salazar's "tropical fish" - I have them displayed side by side - total spent about $300 or so on 3 marbles...but they are works of art, signed and are well known.

i'm startin to think marbles are less collectible than I used to think - way tooo many fakes, frauds and scammers in the market - especially of late - there is no longer a definite way to know what you are buying. Marbles are just too easlily reproduced by fakers to maintain their unique value as a collectors item. I am seriously considering selling my collection - if anyone is interested....