YasudaCollector

He's been well loved. 🙂 That banana looks fun too! I guess it just has a little inclusion.

Man! I think I know who you mean Jeff54. There's a guy in India selling a lot of Asian cats eyes and Japanese transitionals for hundreds if not thousands! 🤢 Is there a way to report people like this to ebay? Reminds me of a Rick Steves travel episode I saw a couple years back. He goes to Egypt and a bazaar vendor literally confronts him and says "How can I take your money?" 😕

Nice one!

Yeah! I have a little jar of these guys. I wonder, were they made for Chinese checker sets?

Incredible collection!!! 😃

Here are some others I just found today (a little north of Seattle):

Whoa! Those look amazing! (The big brown one intrigues me).

Awesome marbles!

In the bottom right corner of the 5th picture, there's a cool red, yellow and black marble. If its old, it might be a nice Akro product.

Ooh! I think these are called "Daffodils". I think I heard Aiko say that they were made by Matsuno but I'm not 100% sure. Some other collectors have said these are pretty early Cat's eyes too.

I couldn't agree more! 😆

Here are the paperweights I found in Snohominsh:

Here are some other photos (of a nearby glass factory in operation):

Here are some photos from the museum's collection:

I've been doing some internet sleuthing today about my growing Chinese paperweight collection (maybe I've fallen down a rabbit hole 😆), and thought i'd share this even thought its only kind of marble related. I think it might be of interest to anybody who has any really old, handmade marbles from China i.e transitionals and millefiori marbles. Apparently, there's this big huge glass museum in Boshan, China (now called Zibo). Among other things, the museum, called the "Boshan Colored Glaze Museum", has a boatload of very old glass artifacts from China (including a ton of paperweights that look exactly like the ones in American antique stores). On the museum website, it says that Boshan has been producing colored glass crafts since the Yuan dynasty (1300s). Apparently, "colored glaze flower balls" were produced since the Ming dynasty (1368 to 1644). "Colored glaze flower balls" are what the website refers to as a paperweight. (Glass is called glaze for some reason). I think this information is pretty incredible since it corroborates what Robert Block found, that Chinese marbles could have been produced in Shandong. I feel like this would make sense (at least with the millefiori and painted sulphide marbles) since they are the exact same glass as the Boshan paperweights. Also, the website said that until very modern times, Boshan was really the only town in China producing colored glass (because of acess to a bunch of minerals for glassmaking).

Woah! Akro made corks like this?! 🤯

Interesting!!! I don't think I've ever seen one like this (whatever it is). 🙂

Nice ones! 😎 I'll have to have my brother post a white brown and blue one he found last weekend. It's absolutely enormous (probably like an inch an a half).

Cool find! 😎

Yeah, unfortunately these look like a lot of newer imported marbles from the 1980s and 1990s (probably from either Mexico or China). The large white and purple one (has a purple patch on each end) is a little older (like 1960s) and from the US.

The paperweights I found had been sitting in a display case for so long that the tags had faded completely. (One of the employees had to get out a magnifying glass just to read the prices).

Man, so are there just not as many sellers as before? Or did everything get kind of picked over? I still find a lot of various Asian stuff out there (older pottery, lacquered boxes, bamboo baskets, and a few Chinese paperweights). However, these antiques don't seem to be sought after by a ton of really avid collectors like marbles are.

Oh my gosh, what a coincidence! I was just in Snohomish today! 🤯 I'll have to have Alec (my brother) post some pictures of what he found. As for me, I found some really old looking Chinese paperweights. One is the regular round type, but 3 others are birds with a layer of Millefiori in them. The birds look more like seals though, they're very gloppy and misshapen. 🤣 Nice finds by the way! I love the deep blue/teal color of the Blenko lighter. The mibs look awesome too (it looks like there might possibly be some older Akros in there).

Interesting 🤔