wvrons

Split it.

Some Heaton are very close. But when it is this good it is a Alley.

A Vitro Conqueror. If you mean Gladding ? That was a company who bought and owned Vitro for a while in the later years. Conqueror marbles were made at Parkersburg from the start until the finish. If it was owned by Vitro or Gladding Vitro, they made conqueror marbles of several different sizes. Conqueror and All Reds were a couple of the most produced Vitro marbles for over fifty years steady. Billions of them. Art Fisher founder of Vitro Agate sold Vitro to Gladding Company in 1969. It was then named Gladding-Vitro Agate. Many years later and new owners and name changed to Jabo/Vitro Agate.

Close Heaton but just a little better. Better glass, better oxblood, better pattern than Heaton, sharp points, dives straight down inside the white. All Alley. Original Alley bag from the St.Marys WV location. Three of these known so far. You will see some like your marble below.

Peltier

I hope half of the above makes sense. Not easy to put into words.

Jeff the transparent blue swirls are Ravenswood Novelty. The Vitro piece is fire brick not stone. It is not a mold. It is a crucible, this is where the colors were added to the base glass. It is a piece of the equipment or furnace used in producing the Vitro six vane Cage Cat Eye marbles. It is placed or hangs inside near the front of the furnace, near the outlet or exit hole. The base glass flows in and around the six partitions and comes out around the bottom. The colored glass is feed into the smaller six holes which exit the bottom in a circle. The base glass flows around the outside and between the colors as all of them reach the bottom. The clear base encases the smaller colored glass streams. The marble ends up with the majority a clear glass center and clear glass around the outside, with the smaller streams of colored glass swirling in the clear glass. When a hole plugs then you have five vane cage cat eyes. Crucibles do not last long and have to be replaced often. Big temperature changes inside the furnace affect the life of the crucible. The fire brick of the crucible is thin compared to the furnace walls. The fire brick for most marble furnace walls is about four to six inches thick. The floor or bottom furnace brick of most marble furnaces are about twelve to twenty inches thick. Bottom furnace bricks can be 16 inches wide, 24 inches long and 12 inches thick. Sometimes the entire bottom of a crucible may burn out and fall off completely in the furnace. It is then removed if possible or moved to the side. If possible a new crucible is installed on the fly while running. So some furnace brick pieces will end up in some marbles. Most of those will be discarded. But as always some will escape to collectors. There are a big variety of crucibles, diameter, length, number of holes, Some have only one hole. More than one crucible can be installed in a furnace. I have seen two but not three in a furnace. This is just one of many methods of adding color to the base glass. Machine made glass marble patterns, style or designs all happen upstream before the actual marble machine. The base glass meets the smaller color glass stream or streams. It all flows and twist as gravity pulls it from the furnace to the shear. Clockwise like water down a drain. So the colored lines in the base glass might twist depending on long the stream is to the shear. Short stream equals more straight lines. A longer stream equals more twist. But if to long the glass will get to cold and cause major problems. Machine made marble making is finding all the sweet spots and keeping things there. But they change often. During the investor runs at Jabo, we had two Jabo operators for one machine, and lots of helpers. Many times every person was busy trying to get things back in order. Every minute during a problem, glass is being lost. About 250 marbles per minute and each investor wanted every marble they could get. The crucible above was dug at Vitro Agate Parkersburg WV. The pictures are of one single broken crucible. A new crucible would be much longer than this piece. This is a bottom which has broken off after lots of use. A new one is maybe 16 or 24 inches long or more, can be four or six inches diameter and like a hallow tube or pipe shape. They can vary for different furnace configurations, sizes and uses.

Ravenswood Novelty.

MK

Not Blue Lagoon. Not Vitro. Heaton or Ravenswood.

Nice Jabo.

Alley

The number one key with every company was marbles per minute, per month. Everything else came in line after marbles per minute, 24hrs a day. Correct once things were running standard product, keep it running at all cost. Making any repairs and adjustments at all possible, on the fly while keeping things hot and flowing. They never shut down and everybody went home at 5pm each day. At the most worth a penny each and at 200 per minute, they might make 200 cents a minute before any cost were deducted. Deduct the natural gas, the equipment cost and maintenance, the ingredients, labor, advertisement, shipping, etc. The 200 cents per minute gets small. So every minute counted if there was to be any profit. Keep it going, to keep going, and have a job. One of the lowest paying jobs at the time,

Attaboy never give up. There sure are some nice four and five colors ones out there.

Which Cub Scout ? There are more than one company who has marbles named Cub Scout. MK-Akro-Peltier- and others. Marble names are not that simple any more. At one point Cub Scout meant one certain marble from one company. Those days are gone. The puzzle is much larger and complicated now.

yes and yes.

Alley

Maybe it is Champion, Cairo or Ravenswood or others. Not many traits to narrow it down. The pictures have to much light and washed out, to tell much about the base. There is not a lot of color or swirl pattern to the marble. It is kind of plain and generic. Break it in half maybe the pearl is still inside ?

Of course Kokomo made some marbles that glow, so did Peltier and every other company. Now if you have proven Kokomos from packages, digs, employees, etc. with this same base or color combo which glow. And next you have proven Peltiers that look the same which do not glow. Then you can sort them by the glow. I have had a couple thousand to maybe five thousand Kokomos in my hands. I have had the original mesh bags and box sets in my hands. I still have problems separating many from Peltiers. Some are obvious, but some are so close that I will have to study a lot more. If both companies used the same methods, the same glass, same type equipment. I would expect some to look the same just as some Alley and Ravenswoods are the exact same. Because they both used the same method, the same glass, same type equipment at a point in time.

These companies made marbles 24hrs a day, 7 days a week, 200-250 per minute, sometimes for months. What is a run ? They might change colors ten times a day or once every two or three days. The worst thing for a glass furnace or marble machine is to shut it down and let it sit. The machine rolls will begin to rust in 12-24 hrs. Big temperature changes will cause furnace brick to crack. The term RUN is misused very often. This started after the investor runs at Jabo in 2008. They were specific numbers of pounds of glass paid for by investors. They usually lasted 8 to 12 hours long and 2000lbs. Once that specific run was done the furnace and machine was never shut down. We just rolled out the 3/4 machine and put a 9/16 or 5/8 back under the furnace and went back to making industrial marbles. Vintage WV swirls companies might make 2000 or 6000lbs. of white base and blue swirls. Then make 2000 or 6000lbs. of white base and red marbles. Then maybe make 2000 or 5000lbs. of white base and orange swirl marbles . What ever they needed or had orders for. Once they were all made then they would be mixed together packaged, bags, boxes, drums, etc and shipped. Many of the multi color marbles comes when the color changes happen. Making white base and blue swirls. Switch to red. Let the blue colored glass run low and get thin. Add the red on top of the blue. Now you have white base with blue and red swirls. When the blue is totally gone you have white base and red swirls. So what is a RUN ? Where does a run begin and stop ? That will probably be different with many people. How do you know when the changes happened unless you were there ? Unless you were there or someone was who knows when something started or ended. How do you know when a run began and stopped ? Very hard if at all possible to know what a run was unless you or someone witnessed it. So many terms misused with marble collecting. Like cold roll mark. One hundred more times likely to be a hot roll mark rather than cold roll mark. But once it is printed in books, it is almost impossible to change. The answer is always, but it has always been this. To move forward requires change.

It is possible for any machine made marble old or new to glow. Every company old or new has made marbles that glow. A corkscrew is probably the most simple style or pattern machine made marble to identify. Only Akro made corkscrew marbles as standard production week after week and year after year. Other companies have a few fluke not planned corkscrew pattern marbles. But 98% of the time if it is a corkscrew it will be from Akro Agate. The corkscrew is the first thing that I teach children to identify with machine made marbles. They pick it up in a few minutes and will begin sorting out corkscrews from a big group of marbles. You can collect Akro corkscrews a lifetime and never get all the colors combinations and sizes of each color combo. With a corkscrew the striping color or colors start on one pole twist around continuous uninterrupted to the opposite pole and never cross over each other.

Alley Strawberry Shortcake.

If the black cat is in the fourth and last picture ? It is foreign Asia which I thought it might be all along. Which is the highest odds for any 9/26-5/8 black three vane cat eye.

Left two Alley. The right Jabo.