Alan

Significantly less - and generally far harder to sell.

IMO - the greater challenge in finishing what are classically referred to as "pontils" (which really aren't) - is controlling heat throughout the process. Vintage marble makers didn't have access to the kind of tool used today. Managing heat in the cane throughout the process took skill and experience - and careful time management. The center of the cane is always hotter than the outside. So necking-down has a differing effect for casing glass, outer decoration (color bands etc) and the core. And the larger the diameter of the cane the more heat was stored. And of course different glass colors have somewhat different melting points. Finishing what is referred to as the "pontil" is fraught with opportunities for imprecision. The first time I necked-down a 2" diameter cane I felt that 6 things were going wrong....heat, rotation speed, my pressure on the jacks, time....

Cane-cut handmades were not rocket surgery. They are generally not perfect in quite a few respects. That is because of how the cane is made - and more often - how each marble is necked-down, cut and finished. It was a volume business for a child's toy - so perfection wasn't the name of the game. The tools and the process were crude, the heat high and the pay low.

It is a cane-cut marble. There is nothing at either cut off point that strikes me as unusual.

Thats a very nice box.

Torch-made contemporary. The ribbon is usually made by flattening pulled canes.

Those would be well over $4.00/each marble delivered, assuming no customs charges!

IIRC (and I may not) - they are reminiscent of those contemporary marbles being sold out of Germany about a decade ago. I emailed them back then about purchasing - but never heard back.

It looks pretty similar. That is why I posted that photo. Since its your question - its your research/comparison ball to carry.

My first look at the glass on the back caused me to wonder if that pattern was a "pick and feather" approach used on beads. But I backed up and looked at it from the 300' level - and I see glass flow lines that naturally taper from a poured flow. I think trying to coat a simple mold with oxblood and then pouring in white foundation glass would be either improbable or terribly hard. The simplicity of this piece reminds me of Occam's Razor: "When you have two competing theories that make exactly the same predictions, the simpler one is the better." Its an interesting one of a kind piece.

The mold was inverted when poured through holes at the feet.

Guess: Its a one-off mold someone made of something expedient and easy. Probably not meant for production...just for amusement or the kids at home.

It looks like it was poured into a simple mold, and the ears and eyes were added later manually - and the tail was picked and turned up.

Those photos are not sharply focused. I'd like to see it in focus under better (not flat) lighting.

Same here:

Sky Blue Onyx with Oxblood:

It seems that the use of "Same Run" for machine mades is an attempt to twist the term "Same Cane" into machine made territory. That attempt makes no sense to me. Machine made types of the same pattern, same size and same glass chemistry were run for a very, very long time....YEARS in many cases. That was the purposeful plan - to consistently make the same successful type to fill orders over a long, long time. With the very rare exception of true bona fide experimentals - use of the term "same run" makes no sense for machine mades. You could hold 4 marbles of the exact same design and they could each have been made a year apart - and no-one could tell the difference. Borrowing the "same cane" handmade idea just doesn't apply to machine mades.