Alan

My favorite >1" dia. Popeye:

Red and Yellow Popeye on a fluorescent Vaseline base:

I recuse myself since I am a European sports car KoolAide drinker....

Champion Furnace marbles are very nice. Unfortunately a large percentage of them have annealing fractures due to incompatible glass.

My luck is getting better every day!

Thanks for the visual....

As noted above - the cardboard box is definitely new. It would be helpful if creators of such boxes would stamp he inside the the lid in ink with the year of it's creation (the name of the person or company creating it would be even more noble). I can't think of any reason to NOT permanently stamp them.

+1 on Eternity Glass - who have a sterling reputation for this specific unique requirement.

Here is my new arrival:

Yes.

This box is quite odd. I am familiar with a number of the Salesman's Sample cases and have never seen anything that looked even remotely like this. The doubling-up of types within the box seems difficult to understand the purpose of. I find the labels to be quite odd as well. While I obviously don't know their origin - it seems reasonable to look at them carefully as no other case has ever had anything like them. What is most puzzling perhaps is why Akro would intentionally omit their best sellers from a Salesman's case. The fact that this turned up in NZ is not too surprising. A Salesman's case turned up in Australia roughly 10+ years ago.

I just received this corkscrew from Mike Edmondson. As always - mike does great work! This one has a transparent blue base and is 1-1/16""

Akro Milky oxblood:

Interestingly destructive....but I don't think that is one of the types we are discussing.

They are out there - but a GS with oxblood is far less common:

I own a number of them and there is no sign of a white base/color veneer. I suppose I could crack one open... The glass color appearance is strikingly different than vintage P&R MK types - it comes across as much more glassy. All of the MK "remakes" of those types appear that way.

Yes - those are the new ones. They are not patch and ribbon (not even close) and not veneered. They are pretty easy to spot and IMO not even close to the vintage types.

I would be happy to buy mint Spidermen with oxblood for $20.

You cannot truly heal a fracture. You CAN treat it to make it visually less obvious - but don't mistake that for returning it to its original strength. The treatment (IIRC it is a form of optically clear epoxy) costs enough that it isn't worthwhile on a $20 marble. Do not temperature shock (either direction) a marble with a partial fracture or annealing plane. It can pop in an instant.

Those are some cool MKs you have there.

Christmas-y solid cores with mica by Bill Murray: A Christmas-y submarine by John Hamon Miller: This was Bill Murray's Official Christmas marble (with green adventurine) - with a cool padded gift box! A Christmas marble by Kris Parke from a few years ago - with blizzard dichro:

I'll comment that some of these recent monthly color "themes" seem to be bordering on the very complex to the point of excluding many on the board from participating. I would urge those who plan to be so specific to consider that complex, hard-to-find color concepts may be seen as creative - but they are also very exclusionary. Marbles meeting the above criteria have to meet 3-4 tests.... "snowy mica" not being a minor one by anyone's measure. I may be misunderstanding the intent of these threads - and perhaps the desire is for them to be small, with limited contributions from board members over the period of a month. As an earlier poster noted - I don't think you are going to get much participation...and when you do it will be contemps (which not everyone collects) and handmades (ditto). Respectfully, Alan