wvrons

Not tough enough to be beat past recognition.

Never heard of any Champion Puce swirl.

No slags.

No Wedding Cake. Not by these pictures. The Wedding cakes have two definite different whites. Here is another bad picture. But All that I have on hand right now.

For sure no Akros.

No sir, It is a toy marble foreign to the USA. Made in Asia distributed by Imperial toy marbles and has no Old School Name used by collectors. As the title of this thread says "Old School Names". It is not called a Clown by Old School names.

No name, just a Vitro Boulder. Not a Neon.

Lots of them.

Backlight the original. I think it has a lot more clear than most Red Ravens.

Akro and Alley never made any gear shift knobs. Some pieces and a few full ones were dug at Alley Pennsboro site. But he got them as cullet. I have seen them sold as Akro or Alley for 25 years, but they were not made by Akro or Alley.

Not that I remember. I think they were slick all over, probably polished. They were white, gray, shades of brown and black random twist around the marbles.

No pictures but I had two of those in my hands. Each one was about 1 1/4 inches. The first time I met Bert he put those in my hands and ask me what they were. I had no idea. He said they are Roman glass marbles. He had just come back from Europe to get those two marbles. I gave them back to him fast, before I dropped one or both of them. I met Bert at the first marble show ever held in Canada. He had a room beside of mine. I spent most of three days and evenings there with Bert Cohen and Jack Bogard. That must have been about 2000 or 2002 ? Wish I had pictures, but if I did they would have been on floppy disks. Which most will not open now.

Victories that I know of are all one single color.

A fractured Blue Galaxy is worth nothing to me. But every collector is different and every collection is different. I try to not sell a fractured marble. Some people has talked me into selling them a fractured Champion furnace marble. But I don't do that regular. Every collector draws a line someplace of what damage they will accept or not. I have had more than my share of damaged marbles . I have buckets of them now. I am to a point that I don't need any more damaged marbles. I guess maybe the tip for starting a collection is buy everything you can of anything you like. Then learn what you have bought and its value. Most of us did it, but were disappointed later. Twenty years ago old time collectors told me don't buy damaged and especially fractured marbles. But I did it anyway. I had to learn from my own mistakes and pay for my own mistakes. But I cannot blame any collector or seller, because they told me their experience. So I just pass it along, just like they did. Being a strictly collector never ever selling a marble, or a collector/dealer, or a dealer only. Will affect what you buy. Getting caught up in the name game will affect what you buy. Buying marbles or buying names. In the end each person will buy what they can, that they want. If it is a good buy or a bad buy. Some can offer a million dollars for a collection, but most of us cannot. So we pick and choose. That choice is up to each individual. To start a collection, buy marbles, but the collection and what you buy will change with time.

Alley swirl. No oxblood.

I tried the gold lutz alone and most times we seen some but little oxblood. If I used the small center or heart of the gold lutz chunks, then we saw nice gold lutz. If I used the outer pieces of the gold lutz chunks with the broken green aventurine plate glass. We always saw nice oxblood. I knew the gold lutz was copper crystals. For some reason the green aventurine plate glass made the lesser quality gold lutz preform better ? I have no idea what all was in the green aventurine plate glass. I did this crushed gold lutz and green av plate glass combo at Jabo and at Sammy's Mountain marbles to make oxblood on the marbles. Good to know that the very small grains produce opaque orange. I remember us seeing orange more than once after the marbles cooled, and no one ever added any orange. The second and third Jabo Tribute runs had orange and we had never added any. But we playing heavy trying to get gold lutz to show on the marbles.

I like the small 10 cents and the large 25 cents. That is what they were worth and very few kids were lucky enough to get one. It probably took a large store in larger cities a year to sell a carton. I never seen one or heard of one until the last twenty years. Marbles I bought in the 1950's at the dime store were three for a nickel. They were in small wood six inch squares about four inches deep. Each box had different color combos or styles. Or a 30 count bag for a quarter. Then the Cat Eyes arrived and they were more money.

I collected and played marbles in the 1950's. But many years later while driving up the road. I saw a banner across the road at Sistersville WV. It said marble festival. Streets were blocked off, a carnival running, people filled the streets. It was the first ever Sistersville WV marble show. I had to check it out. I saw people there in WV from the midwest the south the north and far west. I looked at a few marbles for sale. I thought these people were a joke. No way anyone would pay $10.00 or $50.00 for a glass marble. Then I saw people actually buying marbles. Later there, I met Faye Safreed with her late fathers marbles. He, Edwin Safreed was the main person at Ravenswood Novelty . Ravenswood was my home town as I grew up. I remembered the factory and marbles in general. So I bought my first Ravenswood marbles as a adult from her. We had a long talk and I walked away thinking, that was stupid spending that money on marbles. The next weekend that Sunday again driving out another road. I discovered Sam Hogue making contemporary marbles at Mid Atlantic Glass of WV. Then the questions began. Sammy never handed me the answers but pointed me in the right directions for the next ten years steady. The questions have never stopped and I have never found all the answers. Still on the hunt today after 25+ years.

7/8 inch

Alleys

Oxblood color for marbles can be made from a special formula of raw ingredients. Oxblood color for marbles can be from oxblood colored cullet. Oxblood can be from two or more different colors or types of glass. I made excellent oxblood color by addition of a mixture of broken green aventurine plate glass and broken gold lutz. Oxblood is not always from raw ingredients. Glass colors will not burn while on a marble machine rolls. Marble machine rolls are not heated. The only heat in the machine rolls is from the hot marbles. The machine rolls will always be 50%-75% less temperature than any glass as it exits the furnace. Glass in the furnace can be 2200 or 1800F. Once the glass leaves the furnace outlet it starts dropping in temperature. four inches or a foot later entering the shear the temperature is probably 1500F. Exiting the shear is probably 1300-1200F. Glass globs or slugs go down the slides to the rollers and once it hits the machine rolls the glass temperature is probably 1000F. Once in the roll grove it starts rolling at about 900-800F. This above all happens for one marble in less than one second. Glass temperature at the end of the rolls maybe 500F or less. The marbles are red/orange color. Red hot glass. Over the next 24hours as the glass marbles cool then the colors begin to show. Heat glass ingredients or glass cullet colors red, blue, green oxblood etc. colors to 2500F or 500f and it is all red /orange. Some colors and some certain glass will heat faster or slower than others. Red is one of those hard to control colors. At Jabo, at Sammy's Hogues contemporary marbles, at Sammys machine made marbles, red color may end up red, shades of pink, burnt red going to brown, or never see any of red. I have added a full stick of $50.00 Kugler glass, one inch diameter, 12-14 inches long, into the crucible or front of the furnace. To add a red swirl on white marbles and never ever see one tiny spot of red color on any marble. Red color is bad at sucking totally inside the marbles and also at burning up completely. What you add is not always what you get at the end. Have two thousand pounds of 2000F glass in a furnace. Add to much cold color striping glass and that 2000F drops fast. If the natural gas is not increased at the correct rate, the temperature on the glass in the furnace drops. Increase the natural gas to fast and the glass temperature in the furnace goes to high. No different than cooking on a natural gas cook stove. You can burn any color and change the original look. The marbles do not change, size, color, style, type, pattern once they reach the marble machine. The marble machine is nothing but a frame work with sets of long grooved rolls which do nothing but round the hot glass glob into a marble and start the cooling process. There is no heat added to the marble machine rolls. That is as simple or the best I can describe glass temperature and glass colors for making machine made marbles. It can get complicated how much heat, when to heat up or lower heat, where to actually add heat. No heat, no marbles, wrong heat, wrong marbles. Every step of the process from start until cool is a balancing act. It gets off balance often. This is why it takes a operator present 24hours a day. "It is not really Oxblood unless it was meant to be just that." I don't understand that ?? Oxblood is a color, if it is oxblood color, it is oxblood. There are different shades of oxblood color. If you add different things and have no odea what you may get. It then ends up having nice oxblood. Is it not oxblood, planned or not ? Unless you were present how would you know 100% for sure, if it was planned oxblood or not ? Some oxblood is planned but also some may not be planned. Or the planned oxblood disappears or is brown or black.

Sure will.

I can separate old handmades and machine mades blind. If you are blindfolded, you are not looking at colors or the flow of the surface glass. The surface of good quality marbles should all be smooth. A texture would be mean a problem for most marble makers. Most chalk is not as smooth as most glass of any type. Most quality mint range Akro, CAC, Peltier, NLR, etc. even Vacors. should feel slick or oily. Most mint marbles may feel a lot different than the same near mint marble. But it is not because of the glass, it is because there is a problem with the marble. Do Akros feel like chalk ? Same question. What does a Akro feel like ? How does ten different Akro marbles feel different than ten different Peltier marbles ? Can you feel the difference between Akro marble glass and Akroware glass ? Can you feel the difference between Akro and Houze glass ?

Ravenswoods or Alleys ?