wvrons

When it comes to legal matters, insurance, court hearings, etc. I don't think there are any licensed certified marble appraisers anyplace in the U.S. There is no certified or official grading system for marbles.

Yes Nola has the marble she made.

The last pic that I posted above is a Alley Abalone Pearlized Flame dug at the Pennsboro site. It has a sliver and slight blue finish from being buried it the ground over a lot of years. Not a Alley chalkie, a chalkie is chalk white. Alley Chalkie

If you get a 6 or a 9 spin on a machine made marble. it is not spinning correct. The hot glob has to spin in all different directions in each marble machine roll groove. If it spins in one direction only you have a 6 or 9 twist and a roll mark. Anyone who has used a three head marble polishing machine knows this well. The marble has to spin in all directions constantly all the time it moves, to stay round in a polishing machine.

Guess where or how Vitro Agate Marble Company got its name ?

I think every vintage marble company in WV used many different colors of Vitrolite cullet. Even Alox used Vitrolite. Davis, Playrite, Cairo and Jackson used a unusual dirty ivory white Vitrolite cullet that glows bright, in some, not all of their marbles. I have never found this certain Vitrolite cullet at any other marble factory site. These companies were all not far apart and may have shared one dump truck load of this certain Vitrolite cullet. Vitrolite made over a hundred different colors of glass. All the WV marble companies used some color of Vitrolite cullet in making marbles. Most Vitrolite pieces has small grooves on the back side to hold the mastic or cement to stick it to the wall ceiling or whatever. Some of it has two different colors laminated together. Oxblood Vitrolite OtherO Just a few on many colors of Vitrolite cullet. Not all but most was in tile form of different sizes and thickness. Most is about 1/4 inch thick and 4 x4 inch or 6 x6 squares. I have seen it up to 1 1/2 inch thick. Also made in large sheets. Used on walls, counter tops, ceilings, buildings outside wall covering, signs, decorative art pieces, and hundreds of more uses. A WWII Army tank brass cased, bullet proof, view port or window. Bullet proof because of twenty or thirty laminated layers of clear Vitrolite glass. Viitrolite factory picture in Vienna WV, just north of Parkersburg WV. All gone now, just history. Vitrolite was used all over the world especially in Europe.

Not enough green for me to be the cucumber.

Long trip for Chuck(cheese)from GA. One tired man at the end of each long day. But well worth the expense and time. These chances have almost vanished. Most old factory sites,95% of them are empty, under new concrete, buried really deep, etc. Some days you find the mibs, some days you don't find them. Not every day or even once a year is a full bucket a day. But a FEW times in 25 years of digging, several full buckets in a day.

Heaton did make a big number of swirls with horsehair. Lots of the horsehair, some call oxblood, at Heaton was actually from maroon Vitrolite cullet. I found lots of the cullet and matched big numbers of the horsehair with the maroon Vitrolite with 20 and 30X loupe.

Good chance of Jabo.

Messed up late 1980's Champion.

Could have been someone just checking glass, taking a sample of glass in a furnace. The steel rod is usually just hit on something and the glass glob brakes off the rod. Many times it is a flat clean break. This also fits with the big air bubble.

I agree that they are both Jabo.

Back when I started collecting marbles a flame needed three flame tips together to be considered a flame. Not one tip one one side and two tips on the opposite side. Then the number of tips for a flame was bumped up to four and I see some now posting and saying five tips to be a flame. Some Alleys and CAC will have numbers of flames on both sides of the marble. Some can have 12-15-18-20+ different flame tips. The number of flame tips required to be a flame is up to each collector, buyer or seller. If you have two marbles for sale marked flame. One has three tips and one has ten tips, guess which one I will buy. A name should not sell a marble. But many collectors buy names. Most of us do it at some time or another.

#2 doesn't fit Jabo's size range. Jabo produced sizes from less than 5/16 of a inch, all the way to one inch.

Many full buckets came from that one hole. It was at the edge of the loading dock. We learned from a former employee why the marbles were there. But that is another story. The other hot spot or great producer was by a city water line. Which was originally a ditch that maybe drained water from a spring. It was filled over level, full of marbles and dirt. Holes here filled with water about as fast as they were dug. But you can pull marbles up out of muddy water. I saw one woman fill a bucket and she never saw many of the marbles until they came out of the muddy water. Her son would dig up and loosen the dirt and then she would feel for the marbles.

My best advice is, if you are posting more than three marbles, it helps if they are numbered, or separated some way, in groups with two or four pics of each marble. Just look at the other post here for the last week or so and that can be a good guide.

Some names were done buy the companies who produced the marbles. Other names are from or by collectors.

Two of those oxblood and av Heatons were dug at the site by myself.

Are you talking about me again ?

Marble King Bengal Tiger. A nice one, not a blended one.