shiroaiko

@Parmcat, you've got a lot of Seike marbles! As @Fire1981 mentioned, they are all Figure 8s. Speaking of Seike’s glass, his green often contains bits of dark green debris. You might also notice white sand-like particles in the opaque white. Because the white glass has a lower melting point than the transparent base, it tends to stretch and blotch on the surface. These are transitionals that correspond to your transparent Figure 8s. They were sourced from the UK, which was the biggest customer of Seike’s marbles before the war. And these are my local finds. Do you see any familiar faces?

You are welcome.😃🫶✨

I've got a marble mail from a local collector here in Japan and it included some interesting photos. According to chigasaki_seaglass (on Instagram), the screenshots were originally taken in 2019. They show listings from an auction site and he recalls the seller was an American collector. I wonder if anyone here might recognize who that was? The first box features Rupert the Chick and the Stripey Tiger, a UK comic series for young readers which ran from 1920 to 1957. All of them show the color combinations that I associate with Seike, so they are most likely crease pontils. The second box is of Reg'lar Feller's with the same kind of transitionals.

Seike did make machine-mades in the pre-war period. Below is from his earliest patent for a glass crucible designed to provide automatic glass flow from a bottom opening for marble production. Utility Model No. 2564 (Showa 6) was filed on August 7, 1930. The Duck Marble brochure (intended for the Japanese market) features a photograph of Seike’s marble-making system from around 1932. His marble rollers are constructed in layers. Instead of the spiral grooves found in standard marble machines, his use parallel grooves. This results in the distinctive tiered structure.

Thanks for your help @Ric. I also identify the marble as a pre-war Figure 8. At that time, Naoyuki Seike was producing both transitionals and machine-mades at his factory in Hanaten, Osaka. There is a correspondence in color combinations between the Figure 8s and the transitionals. His business started in 1924 and was known as “Seike Marble Works” before WWII. This advertisement appears in the 1937 edition of New Japan Trademark Directory 「新興日本商標総覧」. In May 1942, a joint company called Nippon Special Glass Ball was formed by Seike, Nakanishi, and Yanagawa. This was part of a wartime industry consolidation effort by the government. The plan was to reduce the number of marble factories to just two—one led by Seike’s group, and the other by Isogami, Yasuda and others. However, as the war situation worsened, only Seike’s group was allowed to continue, while the others were forced to shut down or shift to other business. After the war, Nippon Special Glass Ball was reorganized as a corporation in May 1948. This article from the Official Gazette was provided by Brian Graham to me in December 2021. The name 'Nippon Special Glass Ball Mfg. Co. Ltd.' is the English wording Naoyuki Seike himself used in an export brochure for the Duck Brand, which was produced around 1952. Please refer to the Marble-Related Document section for the details of the brochure.

I agree with @Ric. Thanks for letting me know, @akroorka!😃🫶✨

No problem. It happens sometimes.

@Ric Sure! Here are examples of Seike's crease pontils. Naoyuki Seike started making his first transitionals around 1924. These puzzle boxes came to me June 2024. @Joe2 Joe Valencia was the former owner of them. Seike's green often has dark green bits in it. Below is a close-up of spidery crease pontil. As for pinch pontils, I believe they were made by Yasuda. Yasuda was the third largest marble maker in my country before the war, after Seike and Isogami. His Shiba marble factory is known to be started from 1933. Ukichi Yasuda himself served as the vice-chairman of the marble makers' association. The original photo was from an eBay listing which Winnie reported back in 2015.

The examples on the photo are not the closest, but I guess it is Taiwanese.

All of the Japanese transitionals are pre-war made. The maker of crease pontils is most likely to be Seike.

Seike would be the maker of Japanese pinchers. These are some variations sourced from my country.

@Ric If you ever decide to part with any of your boxed wirepulls in the future, I’d appreciate the opportunity to purchase them.

@akroorka Hearing kind words from someone with your experience really made me happy. Thank you—I’ll keep going, little by little. @LevvyPoole I understand how you feel. Sometimes people may find such questions bothersome, and in Japan lately, many transactions have become anonymous, which makes it harder to ask about background. But in my experience, many sellers on eBay are willing to answer questions. I still try anyway.

@LevvyPoole, in that very first year I started to collect marbles, I came across a lot containing many marbles which were thought to be made after the war when severe material shortages struck the country. Although I didn't know anything about them, but I sensed the importance of the marbles being kept together as a group. Every time I acquired a new lot, I always asked the seller about its background and took notes. Often the seller didn’t have useful information, but asking about the history was all I could do for many years. If I were to mix the lots, all my notes would become meaningless. That is partly why I don't mix my marbles.

@Ric, thanks in advance for your help. It's good news to me—I've always wanted to study marbles that are still in their original boxes. The general definition of Veiligglas wirepulls was shaped at a time when Seike marbles weren’t yet recognized in the marble community. Now that we’re seeing three possible makers of wirepulls, I think it’s time we study original boxed sets with fresh eyes.

When we talk about wirepull makers, I think Seike should also be part of the discussion. I know this thread is about Hopf vs. Veiligglas, but to my eyes, some of the marbles shown look like Seike’s work. In the first picture, the box you see is the “16 Bolitas Japonesas” box from Argentina. The second and third pictures show a Codeg box marked "Foreign"—and in both of these cases, I believe Japan would be the most reasonable answer.

@Parmcat You're welcome. 😃 The company started in 1998. Sorry for the mistake.

Yixing Jinzhu Glass Products is the maker. I agree that the bombers are modern because the company was found in 1998. The English name for these marbles is “milky marbles 6,” but in Chinese, they’re called “milky 8-petal marbles". It’s strange, but they use different photos and names for the English and Chinese versions of their website. So it’s worth checking both versions of the site. http://yxjinzhu.com/en/index.asp

@Ric I'm glad you found the little box interesting! These ohajiki and ishikeri were primarily made for the domestic market, which is why there’s very little documentation about them. This is in contrast to marbles, which were exported around the world—so while the records are still limited, at least some survive. In comparison, the ohajiki industry was much smaller than that of marble making. I’ve only found one patent document so far, likely because the production methods were quite simple. That said, before the war, Japan aimed to build an empire across Asia, including in places like Manchuria and other regions where Japanese communities lived. These kinds of toys, along with marbles, were shipped to children in those overseas communities. As for rock-paper-scissors—we call it “janken” in Japanese. It’s still very common for both children and adults, though I honestly don’t know its exact origin. There's historical document from around 1907 that molded glass ohajiki were popular among small children in areas like Nagoya and Gifu. Some of these pieces even feature Chinese characters: 石 (rock), 紙 (paper), and 鋏 (scissors)—but they are quite rare. Here is a reel made by ichijinnokaze2020 regarding rock paper scissors ohajiki. You also mentioned the Arabic numeral. We sometimes see numbers or even alphabet letters on these glass pieces. I've personally seen many with A, B, C, D, and E, but not the full alphabet. Letters like R and others are much less common, so I suspect there were production imbalances. Also, regarding the giya-bako box: all the examples I know of were made for the domestic market. These boxes began appearing in the Meiji era, when glass started to be mass-produced. I suspect glass boxes are not suitable for export. They're vulnerable to long journeys and the weight of other boxes if packed together. I have an Instagram friend I sometimes talk to via PM. Below are some of the ohajiki collection of umelandinsta, including giya-bako boxes.

I have Robert Block's ”Marbles”, where it says on page 130: “Marble making was one of the industries introduced to Japan as part of post–World War II reconstruction.” Most readers in the U.S. probably accepted that as a fact, and I suppose Mr. Block had his own reasons for saying so. What I'm curious about is what kind of historical documents or sources about Japanese marble production were available in the U.S. over the years. That would help explain how such ideas were formed.

My glass toy box (12 × 15 cm) has 10 cat's eyes. 9 are Stripeys. The 7 marbles which I could count 4 vanes. 15-17.6 mm. One got a fat vane which almost fills half of the marble. Mamekeri flat marbles. The yellow ones are about 26mm across, 8 mm thick. Mamekeri and ohajiki with numbers. Mamekeri are bigger than ohajiki. 30-18mm. Ohajiki with paper rock scissor designs and a flower. The green measures 21 mm. Other glass toys that I don't regard as original to the box. They are believed to be even earlier in the production time.

Steph, it is the first time for me to hear about the Winnie's thoughts. It’s encouraging when someone like Winnie had examples to support it. Her prewar box helps to give more weight to the idea that stripeys were already being made before the war. This is a prewar box of glass toys, including stripeys. A local find. Collectors refer to this type of box as a Giya-bako, which means “diamond box.” The word giyaman is an old Japanese term that originally meant “diamond,” but later came to refer to glass. Since all the other toys in and around the box are believed to be prewar-made, the stripeys are most likely from the same period. I am the current owner of the box. I took better photos this morning but the photo library on my computer does not refresh. I will post photos later.

That looks like Seike to me. Partial translucency in base glass sometimes shows up in his marbles. It resembles Yixing Jinzhu Bombers a bit, but they usually have 8 ribbons.

Just to review the timeline of the patents related to cat’s eye marbles: Seike submitted his utility model application related to cat’s eyes on March 3, 1938. Isogami followed to submit his own utility model focused specifically on cat's eyes on March 11. Later, on May 25, Isogami filed a design registration for the same type—most likely an attempt to prevent Seike from making marbles similar to his own. And by March of the following year, Seike’s “stripey” type marbles were already on the domestic market, and a photo documenting them was taken by Kan-ichi Hashimoto. As for the photo itself—I believe it was taken because the photographer was moved by the beauty of these marbles resting in the hands of a hardworking person.

It would be the earliest photo of cat's eye marbles... The search word "びー玉" or marble/s at NDL digital service brought me to the find this morning.