wvrons

I would have no problem with this marble being labeled a CAC submarine. if definitely CAC ? It would be on the lower value of most CAC submarine marbles. They are transparent base, some or many also have colors on the inside. I think they can be a patch ribbon style or swirl style. Most are colored transparent base. Submarine name has always been confusing with different opinions. Even the Peltier submarine is confusing for many. Some collectors want a submarine to be transparent blue base. I stay more away from the submarine label. Adding submarine name should not increase the value. The marble is what it is and any buyer should decide for their own self what they want to label it. I would call or label many of the named or called CAC Exotics as submarine type. If clear base CAC with action on the inside then you get into cyclones, tornadoes, etc. More confusing labels with not many set definitions or requirements. As you have seen it is hard to get people to pin down a definite definition or requirements. Other WV swirls in other colors also look similar to the one above. But they are never labeled as submarine. Alley Mountain Dew similar construction and Alley exotic corals are similar construction. Plus others.

The yellow base with red is a nice Alley.

Top row left to right #1= Peltier MCS - Multi Color Swirl #2= newer Jabo #3= probably Alley swirl or weak flame. Could be CAC ? Maybe the best marble of the group, only one picture. Bottom #1= Maybe Vacor ? Can only see one side. #2= Vitro A smooth flat surface will let the marbles show better. Camera is focusing more on the background than the marble.

Very few marble companies made marbles with a flat or matt finish. If they did the marbles were more likely game marbles or industrial marbles. I am sure that 95-99% of all play marbles were a gloss shiny finish. No reason the kids would want a flat finish rather than a gloss finish. Your marbles probably have what most refer to as pocket ware. Pocket ware is not a hit, chip, sparkle, or moon. Pocket ware is just ware from being handled rolled around with other marbles. Roll or rub two pieces of most glass together for enough time and the glass objects will grind against each other and this grinding will take the shine off . It is a more even all over grind than I hit or chip etc.in one localized spot. The hits which cause sparkles, moons and chips are much harder impact and in one spot. Pocket ware Is slighter abrasion all over the surface of the marble. Pocket ware is very common with vintage or old marbles. You will not see big numbers of Jabo marbles with pocket ware. Because they are new enough that most have not had years and years of rubbing together. A three head marble polishing machine can bring most pocket ware marbles back to mint with only a final polish or buff. But If you can find someone to do it, it may cost $2- $3 or $5.00 each to get this done. Add that plus shipping etc. to the normal market value and only few machine made marbles are worth the effort time and cost to polish or buff. Most all veneered marbles(later MK- later Vitro - others) are not a candidate for polishing or even a buff. The colors are thin on the surface and to much color will be removed by polishing or buffing. You have marbles with normal pocket ware, Light damage, but all over the surface of the entire marble. Most collectors shy away from marbles with pocket ware. Condition, condition, number 1.

Nice find. Great price, probably the lowest you will ever get a nice Pelt Christmas Tree for. All the effort pays off. The effort can pay off in many different ways.

I agree.

Jabo swirl with drizzle. Or Heaton swirl with drizzle.The blue, green color has a slight bleed over in the white base. It is not electric color, just transparent, translucent blue, green. The more times I look at it, I lean more Heaton Agate. It is a white base with transparent green, added to the base. Not always but usually, the largest amount of color is the base glass in the main furnace. There is more white with this marble than the green. The green was added near the front of the furnace as the main base glass exits to the shear then to the marble machine rolls. White is many time the base glass color. White was the lowest price colored glass. Other colored glass cost more than white. Red cost the most. Making 1000lbs. of marbles, the best cost is 800lb. of white and 200lb. of the transparent green, for the colored swirl marbles like the above. Sometimes it is very difficult to tell what the base glass is. Maybe two or three colors and all look to be the same amounts. Transparent color helps has you can see more inside the marble. With all opaque colors you cannot tell what or how much of each color may be inside the marble. Plus marbles have many exceptions. You have to go with the majority dealing with marbles.

Fun and work. More work than most expect. I have dug marbles with 80-90 different people over the years. Only about 10 of those ever came back for a second day. After they are dug that is only half the work. Once they are home then the work cleaning them properly begins. I have buckets of dirty uncleaned marbles from 10-15 years ago. It is lots of time and work. No dug marble is free.

You are 100% correct. There is no substitute for actual hands on, seeing and feeling the actual thing. Also the books and internet can never replace the same results as talking marbles face to face with collectors and dealers in person at marble shows or anyplace, live in person.

I agree the first could be a Peltier patch. It may have some brown as the base glass ? As for digging marbles at Clarksburg. I do not know of anyplace in Clarksburg that you can dig marbles legal. The old Akro site was dug by many people for the past 25+ years. Some illegal and some legal. The property has been leased for digging several times. It has been dug hard and deep. I have been in dug holes there that were 20-30 feet deep and 50-100 foot square. There is very little marbles and including cullet, remaining at the Akro site. There are always a few missed but 90-95% of anything worth the effort has been removed from the Akro site. The majority of all marble company sites are now just about empty or covered over and buried deep or under newer concrete. Digging marbles at company sites is fast becoming a thing of the past. The same as being able to watch in person, machine marbles being made. This is a thing of the past ! Many of my best memories around marbles are with digging them.

Correct it is not all about the money. Value can be different things. How do you value knowledge ? The damaged broken dirty marbles that I have dug for 20+ years were a lot of value to me. More important than any marble book. Plus some of them had never been seen by marble collectors since they were buried. One company owner could not remember what the marbles he produced looked like at all. Until four of us after two years convinced him to give us permission dig them up. Ninety percent of their total production went to Puerto Rico.

Left to right #1=Akro patch #2=Either Peltier Rainbo or MK ? #3= Maybe Akro #4= Alley swirl #5= Cannot seen enough to know ? #6= Banana cat eye, maybe foreign or Peltier ? #7= Cairo Novelty swirl. All very common, very large numbers produced. No zero collector value at all. Condition is the number one key for any experienced marble collector. A rare $500.00 marble with damage is drastically less. A $500.00 mint marble, the same near mint marble is $300 to $150.00. The same nm- marble is $50.00. The same marble less than near mint- is zero. Your marbles are all less than near mint- . Learning marbles takes years with lots of effort and time every week. Then next is to learn how to grade marbles accurate. Condition is the KEY. Just because it is old does not make it have value. This holds very true with marbles. I have dug marbles at every marble factory site in WV except one. Also in OH and St.Louis. I have also dug different house and business dumps for marbles. There are many mint marbles dug. There are many damaged and non standard production marbles discarded. They were discarded for many different reasons by each company. Some during production and some years after the company was out of business. One key word= Condition

Again there are 4 pictures and the first one looks much different that the other three. The first looks much more or better white than the next three. Every WV swirl company made these dark purple base and white swirl marbles. The key to separating what few can be, is how dark the purple is and exactly what shade the white is. Plus a few have some clear and some do not. Some are very dark purple, green, or brown all which can look black until close examination. About one out of every four or six can be placed with one company without lots of doubt. They have very little value maybe 10-25 cents because they are so difficult to id and because they were so common, so many made and found. No company put some small piece of glowing cullet in each marble to make this little thin stream of glowing glass in your marble. Cullet is dumped from dump trucks onto the ground or a concrete pad outside. It can have left over cullet from the last load. It can have dirt wood metal about anything mixed in the scrap glass(cullet). Most of the things which are not glass will burn up in the furnace. Some of the metal copper, beer caps, electric wire, etc. can end up in the marbles. Most of those marbles are discarded by the company. Your marble is not planned standard production to include the small this swirl of glowing glass. It was no experimental marble. It was just a fluke a mistake a non planned production that happened. Many different unplanned production marbles can happen every day or every hour, making 250 per minute 24hours a day. The purple or green swirls are from a WV swirl company, maybe the same company or maybe not ? Several different traits can be used to separate WV swirl marbles. Some are impossible to separate, but many are unique to only one company. Your purple marble with the small thin glowing swirl is no more valuable than one without it. Very few collectors will put a black light on it or study it enough to see the small thin glowing glass. There could have been one exactly like this or two or 100 or 500 ? At 250+ per minute a lot can happen and be produced in one minute. I still do not know for sure what the actual marble looks like in your hand. Some pictures the white looks more gray, some the white is nice bright white, some the white looks clear, some the white looks thick and heavy, some the white looks thin ? ??????? Every single one of the above can change or affect the identification. Is all the effort worth the 10-25 cents ? Probably not, but hopefully people who read this post will get some more marble knowledge or benefit from it.

That can happen in any machine made marble made from cullet. It is just a small piece of different cullet glass that melted and flowed with the main glass for the marble. What does the marble look like with normal white backlight ?

It looked clear base to me in every picture. Identifications by pictures are exactly that, what the picture looks like not what the marble may look like in hand. If the picture is not accurate the id cannot be accurate.

A few Rainbo's now do have names. The one above has no name that I am aware of. It is a more common color combination.

Left a game marble. The right is Akro Milky oxblood. I have never seen a Cairo Novelty with that much oxblood or that quality oxblood. The S pattern is typical for Cairo and a few other companies Heaton, Jabo and late Alleys.

Views of both cut lines needed. Master should have a inward curved cut line and the other a more pointed cut line.

Some collect the numbers and some collect the letters. Some numbers or letters can look very good. The C or S are very common patterns. These can help in some identifications. The old thoughts of a V meant Vitro is not correct. Many companies have marbles with a V. Another common pattern is the bird wings or a W. Old handmade sulfide marbles can have nice numbers inside, made intentional with numbers. Some try to collect the Sulfides with numbers 1 to 0. But that can take a long time and get expensive. No machine made marble with a number was intentional. Some marbles have decal or printing on them which is intentional. Many of the C-S- or V patterns come form a very short glass stream from the furnace to the shear. The stream does not have time or length to twist as it falls. So the short glass stream just folds over on itself as it hits the shear and makes the C or the V is slightly tighter, and the S pattern just had time enough to begin to swirl. Hot glass flowing down is like water flowing down your sink drain. It twist or turns in a swirl as it flows downward. This action can make a pattern on the outside of the marble. A long glass stream to the shear and you get more twist before it is sheared and drops to the machine roll grooves.

Might be a Vitro Aquamarine or a new Jabo ? The camera is more focused on the carpet than the marble. More carpet than marble in the picture.

Sad to hear this. I had no idea he was fighting cancer. He was a good man and a big help to marble collectors. Always a helping hand any way he could. Lots of smiles, easy going, never a bad word about anyone. Rest in peace Joe

I am still learning but have since the first year I got into marbles. If my questions ever stop ? It might be time for me leave marbles. I have the feeling that you are like so many collectors who think that there are different marble machines for different styles, types, or pattern marbles. That is what I am not convinced of. I don't know when or how the Miller swirls name came from ? It was in place when I started into marbles. But The Miller swirls are the only machine made marble that I can think of that has been designated to only a certain marble machine or machines. If there is a difference in a marble machine that causes it to make swirls only ? That is what I would like to know. Where the early Peltier slags made on the same Miller machine as the Miller Swirls ? It is sounding like the Miller Swirls were made next or shortly after the early slags. I have also heard many times that the MCS marbles were very early. Were the MCS marbles made on the Miller swirl machine ? If so why did they not also get the Miller Swirl name ? I understand some about the cut line disappearing and some show on swirl type marbles. That happens routinely with WV swirls ,Jabos, etc. So were the NLR marbles made on the Miller swirl machine or a different machine ? I will slow down on the questions. But probably not stop until I find my answer. My big question has always been what was so special or different with the machine or machines that produced the named Miller Swirls ? As of today, all the marble machine operators, past different company owners and past company employee's which took the time to answer my questions and had any knowledge of the machines. They all gave me the same answer over many years. The answers were the machine just makes the hot marble round. But none of them were ever at Peltier. I have seen a couple Peltier Miller machines in person. I have seen at least over 50 marble machines in person. Many of those in operation. I saw no big design difference in the machine rolls other than size or the location where the hot glass entered the rolls. The machines were all from early 1930 or before up through the 1940's and the last full size one built in the USA. So I have wondered for many years what was the difference in this machine that made it produce Miller Swirls and not slags, normal ribbon style, or patch style marbles ? I am sure there are different size Miller Swirls. So there were likely more than one special Miller swirl machine. I know for a fact that you can produce patch or ribbon or swirl type marbles on the same exact machine. I have witnessed it several times and done it myself hands on. So it always confused me why Peltier would pay and probably extra for a special machine to make swirls with. Sorry I did not slow down much. For now, I will still hunt and wait for evidence of what difference there was in the special Peltier Miller machines which made Miller Swirls. Until then for me, the marble machine just makes the hot glass glob round and aids in cooling the marble. The design ,type, style of the marble happens upstream before the marble machine. Thanks for the effort and time.

Are Millers Peltier Company only ? Are the first marbles(slags)produced by Peltier also Millers ? Or are Millers just Peltier swirls ? Are all Peltier swirls Millers ?

I think the design type or style of the marble is made upstream of the marble machine. It is made in the furnace, the addition of colors or feed system, the flow to the shear and going through the shear. Once the hot glass glob hits the marble machine, the machine makes it round and cools it.

All Alley swirls.