Alan

Who is making the fantasy boxes?

First - the box in original condition with original marbles is quite rare - probably one of the rarest sights in marble collecting. Second - the box that is pictured appears to have been jumbled and had a fair number of marbles added that were not original to the box. If you have access to the box the first thing you want to do is get the right marbles in the right sections ordered by size. This will help you determine which are not original to the box. A mint example with well-matched original marbles have sold for $12,000. You can tell a box with original marbles because the factory took time to match the marbles to ensure color and pattern were almost exactly the same in a row (in the graduated sizes). I was fortunate to purchase an Akro Saleman's Case years ago from the daughter of an Akro Agate factory employee. The provenance is a nice bonus.

I've spent more than my share of time at the plant digs and have purchased more than my share of material coming out of the plant for quite a few years - including what is reasoned to be early pieces and true small experimental runs. You are correct in saying that early colors were or could be less bright than later colors. Part of that came from Akro perfecting and developing their colorants. I have some early examples that are probably boring to many who are focused on "the book" but I personally find of interest as benchmarks in Akro's development as a key American marble maker. As for the pictured piece - its hard to say Akro or not - IMO. The blue is a characteristic Akro blue but the transparent amber doesn't jump out at me as an Akro production color. This doesn't mean that it wasn't Akro.... it could be a start or end-of-run piece.... or just be an early piece for which we have little reference. I couldn't quite make out the seam - that is another area where Akros (especially early examples) can stand apart. The other feature that makes me wonder is the number of corkscrew turns in the piece. Akros generally don't have that much twist. (Having said that I must say that I do own Akros that have that many turns - but they are few and far between). Akro was not above re-using small batches of cullet made for other pieces (dishes, smaoker's sets etc) for marbles. It was rare but was done If you can get a well lit view of the seam/finish - it may help a little. Regards, Alan

I posted mine yesterday.

The ability to discern the seam is a function of many factors. Those would include the contrast between the different glass colors, the shape and sharpness of the cutoff mechanism, the stream speed of the hot glass at cut-off, the opacity of the glass colors, the subsequent machine forming action after cutoff, glass temperature, cooling rate and time to cool to sphere shape in the rounding mechanism (longer = probably better smoothing/blending between stream colors). Each one of these are variables which can (and did) change from day to day and through wear on various key machine parts. Having spent a lot of time at the Akro plant site, examining a lot of marble rejects, and owning some Akro machine parts... I got some sense of what went right and how things looked when they went wrong. The scale and depth and number of marble reject dumps were HUGE. One of the first things one sees is that marble production was a very low precision, fairly variable volume business. I got a sense what the machine did at the beginning of a run, what they looked like when things got "dialed in" and what the end of run and malfunction pieces looked like. The variability of the glass temperature and the glass colorant mix was greater than one would think. Marble production was not rocket science - by a long shot. Seams varied due to these many factors (and probably more) - so the ability to typify one company's seam is IMO very difficult and assumes constancy of manufacturing method and process over time.

Is the definition of a "submarine" softening? To me all submarines have had a transparent matrix through which a second color distinctly "submarines" into. I don't see a transparent matrix in the pictured pieces.

Its an Akro. A number of these turned up in the factory digs about 6 years ago.

Why would someone find an orangepeel surface on a marble preferable to a normal smooth surface?

I don't feel that the presence of a so called "pigtail" on the glass is indicative or attributable to a single manufacturer. It appears that the glass shear was dull or damaged and a small fragment of glass was left due to the inprecise cut-off of hot glass. Machine-made marble making was/is a huge volume business where the equipment will come out of alignment or develop small (and large) faults during the manufacturing process. I have vintage marble machine parts that show all kinds of wear and breakage that clearly affected the final product. I wouldn't focus so much on the pigtail - but rather the glass. Alan