YasudaCollector

Here is my dorm room at the University of Washington (my home away from home):

Awesome!!! Thanks Chad! It is so neat to see the original packages. I was thinking that I had a few Asian imperials, but now I think I'm leaning Vacor on them. The surface colors have more of a brushed appearance rather than the neat crisp stripes of the new Chinese ones. The colors also look more earthy in mine (like sunset orange, dingy greens, pale blue, and reddish brown).

Is there a way to tell Vacor-made imperial marbles from Asian-made imperial marbles? It seems like both areas produced this style. I thought id ask since a lot of us encounter them pretty regularly in the various jars we buy. (I only save the older imperial marbles though, like those from the 1970s).

I agree! Marble shows seem pretty awesome too (although I've never been to one).

Awesome finds!

My brother also has this one: The colors seem way to bright and crisp for a West Virginia swirl.

The dark green guy actually has these cool whispy threads of opaque glass all through the center. It didn't quite come through I think in the photos.

Here are some others (not cats eyes though). Are they earlier vacor imperials?

I found another one of those interesting orange peel cat's eyes:

Interesting marbles! They look almost like master or vitro patch marbles made with Euro sparkler glass.

This guy has a definite orange peel texture to it.

I also found this guy (in the same store, but in a different group of marbles):

I recently got a whole bunch of these marbles together in a big jar (mixed in with mostly game marbles). They look foreign, but a little different from the Asian cat's eyes I have (the base glass looks very shiny and is pretty grayish). The vein colors look very dingy too (even more so than the Taiwan and India cat's eyes I've seen). I was wondering if they could be some sort of Mexican product, since Mexico was the largest producer of foreign cats eyes besides Asia.

Here are a couple I got from an Oklahoma ebay seller: One is a Yasuda pinch pontil and the other looks like a Nippon crease pontil.

Awesome marbles! I am always stunned by the tremendous variety of German handmades. Those craftsmen way back when were so outrageously talented! 🤯🤯🤯

That guy is awesome!!! The color and swirls are amazing.

I apologize, but I am probably the last person on the forum that could identify different West Virginia swirls. 🤣 I get cross eyed sometimes when I try to tell them apart. 😵‍💫

I wonder if the yellow guy is a JABO. I've seen them come in weird yellow and brownish color combos. The second guy (very nice colors) looks to me like maybe an older West Virginia swirl.

Interestingly enough, most of the pre-war Japanese marbles seem to be Nippon products, not Yasuda. For example, Aiko seemed to say that she comes across far fewer pinch pontil transitionals than crease pontil transitionals.

I have a few of these, and asked Aiko about them. She thinks they were made by Nippon as well during the same time as the figure 8's.

Unfortunately, I don't think they have any particular name to them. I think they just fall into the vague "Japanese patch marble" category.

As for the individual marbles, the first four look like more figure 8's. The two slags at the end look like Japanese transitionals (the first looks like Nippon Special Glass Ball MFG Co product). The second one could be a Yasuda pinch pontil (since I can't see a big crease pontil).

Ooh, the first group looks like figure 8 marbles. Aiko says they were made by the Nippon Special Glass Ball MFG Co from 1936 to 1941.