MARBLEMISER Posted February 28, 2009 Report Share Posted February 28, 2009 There's nothing in the movie to be offended by. I was refering to his powers of deduction. I guess I'll have to look elsewhere for the other knife. But let me let me know if the other one shows up? marblemiser Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steph Posted February 28, 2009 Author Report Share Posted February 28, 2009 will do Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RunnersDad Posted March 2, 2009 Report Share Posted March 2, 2009 Great research Steph. I sold off my vintage bennington's about a year ago and I received a nice chunk of money for them. I believe that you might want to replicate them because you can produce mass quantities with relatively little overhead. Let's say it cost's you 10-15 dollars to creat a batch of 500? That batch of 500 will sell for minimum $100+ but most of the time well over that amount. That's a nice profit. It is far less time consuming than the production of glass marbles. Your pictures do show a lot of inconsistencies with design and color, far beyond what should be considered normal color/size deviation for bennington's. I'm thinking they are not the real deal! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marblemover Posted March 4, 2009 Report Share Posted March 4, 2009 hey steph, you have some info in your study hall about little stands (here) that bennies were supposedly placed on for firing (although i've seen some bennies with screen marks on the bottoms)... any idea how big those stands were? would bennies typically have 3 eyes in a pattern from those? just thinking... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ann Posted March 4, 2009 Report Share Posted March 4, 2009 I have some that a German collector / dealer sent me -- they're about the size and shape of a penny, with a shallow "dish" on the top. The "dished" part is about a penny's thickness, with a slight, sharpish rim of about 2-penny height. Sorry. No camera! Ann Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scoop Posted March 5, 2009 Report Share Posted March 5, 2009 I've seen many with screen imprints, too... Before pottery can be fired, it has to be TOTALLY dry (or, it will crack from drying too fast) I think the screen imprints are in the clay, not the glaze... It would make sense for crockery marbles to be dried on screens. If placed to dry when they're still very soft, the screen pattern could be pressed in. Then, when the glaze is added, texture shows through. If glazed on the screen, the glaze would stick fast to it. They had to be on some sort of stilted surface. The little tripod things look like these I find it hard to fathom that each marble would have it's own tripod... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Delmer Posted March 5, 2009 Report Share Posted March 5, 2009 The eagle and dated marble look fake to me. I would have questioned those. The first photo, they looked OK and mixed in I probably would not have questioned them. I did look at their seller name on ebay, all the marble auctions are more than 90 days old. THanks for doing all the homework. It is appreciated by me and I am sure everyone else as well. GREAT JOB Janice Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marblemover Posted March 5, 2009 Report Share Posted March 5, 2009 Sue, thanks for the info on the pottery firing process. i can't imagine each marble would have it's own tripod, either--but i was wondering if the stands may have been used for the larger-sized ones, and if so, there would be a pattern of 3 eyes on one side--and no other eyes because they would have been set apart from each other so they wouldn't be touching. surely the smaller sized ones wouldn't have been individually placed on stands for firing--that would have made them a whole lot more expensive! maybe those stands were for a different type of ceramic marble...? guess now would be a good time to go inspect my bennie collection, huh? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marblemover Posted March 5, 2009 Report Share Posted March 5, 2009 err...no 3-eyed patterns that i can see on bennies or chinas (even the painted ones) but i don't have anything larger than about 3/4-inch. in fact, on some, the eyes are so numerous and covering the surface that i'm thinking they were layered--at least for the color application part. one thing i did notice is that on most bennington-types is a somewhat distinct "pontil" (for lack of a better term). i.e., they have seams...they have an rough cut-off spot. then, opposite of the rough spot on the larger ones is a kinda pinched-together area (kinda like what one sees on a single-pontil glass hand-made). i'd never noticed seams on them before! are the seams typically obvious because these were produced by a machine? (i had always classified bennington-types as "hand-made" instead of machine-made.) were ANY bennington-types made completely by hand (formed by hand)? if so, would there be fingerprints on them? anybody ever loupe a bennington? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scoop Posted March 5, 2009 Report Share Posted March 5, 2009 Hey Janice, make NO MISTAKE, I'm as positive as I can possibly be, that the eagle and dated bennies are total fakes.... I really like the eagle and if I could get one cheap, without inspiring the maker to make more (as old) I'd love to have one... But, as long as they are represented as old, I'll hold off. WOW Paula, lots of interesting questions there!!! I don't think anyone has ever paid enough attention to ask or answer those questions... I can't say for sure, cuz I really don't know.... But, I've always assumed that bennies were glazed on some sort of a tray that the glaze would not stick to.... What surface would that be, at that time??? I dunno.... I guess that's why there's no answers!!! LOL It would take factory history to answer and I don't know of anyone whose done that.... I can say that the marbles DID stick to each other... I've never seen larger sizes stuck together, but I have a couple of siamese twins and triplets in peewee sizes. I think... The eyes that look very flat, but have a ring of glaze (often blackish on the browns) are where they sat. Other eyes and some chips, would be where they touched, or were very close. Were they stacked??? Hmmm, another interesting question.... I would think the glaze would make too much mess for that... And, it would be difficult to control the kiln temperature if they were not laid flat... It just seems like that would cause more issues than savings, over single layer trays.... How were the clay balls formed??? Again... Interesting question.... Glass marbles were rounded on a rotating cooling surface... I'd bet, crockery marbles were rounded the same way... For the era, I'd bet very young workers, or women, were employed to gather and hand round wads of clay, then drop them onto the rotating surface that rounded them evenly... BUT, this is all conjecture... I have no evidence to back that up. (I bet it's in a book somewhere... But, I confess to not reading a lot of that sort of history!!! LOL) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lifeisgood81 Posted March 5, 2009 Report Share Posted March 5, 2009 Thanks for the heads-up!! I remember the "Prince Albert in-a-can" auction. Almost bid, until I saw how many Albert auctions kept showing up every week. Lisa Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steph Posted March 5, 2009 Author Report Share Posted March 5, 2009 I actually have quite a bit of info from the 1800's about marble making in that century, and about the marble makers. Some would be boring to most (do you want to know how much they were paid, and how many were employed in 1850, and how that compared to the numbers in 1880?). Some would be false I think (unless chinas did really come from china). Some might give some insight, if only tangentially. I'm not sure whether this is a guess or a memory: the clay for the bennies may have been cut into cubes, as stone agates also were of course, prior to rounding into spheres. That would have given more or less uniform sizes, and you could see how that might lead to the occasional shear mark. But if they were rolled into tubes (or molded into tubes) and then cut that would have made the hand-rounding stage easier. And that would explain antipodal shear marks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steph Posted March 5, 2009 Author Report Share Posted March 5, 2009 p.s. it seems quite possible that the process might have been mechanized at some point. And quite possible that it never was. Rounding machinery was invented long before bennies stopped being made. iiuc. But would it have been employed by bennie making concerns? I dunno. It would have meant modernization of time-tested methods/equipment during hard economic times, so? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scoop Posted March 5, 2009 Report Share Posted March 5, 2009 OK... After going through all that diatribe... I looked at a couple of great photos in an auction of uncmikie's I hope, if I plug the AUCTION, it'll be OK to use the pictures?? Since there are 2 of the eyes I mentioned above, on this marble... I'm wondering if that's where they stuck together and look to be cut apart?... It seems to me, if you look at those eyes, closely, they look like they've been filed, or sanded.... The "sit spot" on this marble, looks to be the light area, with sand in it towards the bottom? Maybe they sat on a type of oven brick, like kitty litter?? This picture shows the "screen" pattern... This may also be a thick weave canvas... In all the pottery classes I took in school, we always worked on heavy canvas "placemats." The clay dries on it and shakes off without sinking into the weave. That may have have been the surface they dried on.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steph Posted March 5, 2009 Author Report Share Posted March 5, 2009 Would larger ones have more screen marks than smaller? From the weight? That one has so many interesting spots we could analyze. This looks like a plug. At more than 1 and 1/2", would this one actually have been hollow? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marblemover Posted March 5, 2009 Report Share Posted March 5, 2009 not hollow, i'm sure. i've owned some big bennies in the past (sold em) and they were never hollow--their weight made that evident. but i don't think the weight would add to any impressions from the screening--only a slightly larger touch-area. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marblemover Posted March 5, 2009 Report Share Posted March 5, 2009 sue, interesting about the canvas work surface--that would make sense. i have one bennie that has a LOT of eyes and they are all over it--must be a reason for them (will try to count the eyes when i get home tonight). anyways, the number of eyes made me think they might have been layered at some point in the process. more research: go steph! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marblemover Posted March 5, 2009 Report Share Posted March 5, 2009 related? are "Benningtons" stoneware or clay-based? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scoop Posted March 6, 2009 Report Share Posted March 6, 2009 Hmmmmm.... I *think* all ceramics would be considered "clay-based"... Maybe I'm wrong. I never studied it in a verbally technical way!! LOL But, I always considered clay a general term for a ceramic base... What type of clay determines the final product... Kinda like "glass" is glass... But, there's many types of glass... I also *think* bennies would be a bisque or porcelain type of base... It seems to me, a broken bennie is pretty white inside, with a high density... Much the same as an unglazed china (Which makes sense, since they probably came from the same place.) Stoneware is usually gray or tan and less fine. Bennies are often considered crockery... But, I don't think the type of clay used is really a "crockery" type... Interesting that the real Bennington products that bennies were named after were made of stoneware. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steph Posted February 27, 2011 Author Report Share Posted February 27, 2011 Updating with some of their February 2011 offerings: It's hard to choose which ones to pick. I've pared it down to these. Focusing on the greens because those have improved quite a bit but other colors have improved also. They don't get anything like the money they got for the eagle bennies. One of the lots of 3 greens sold for $17.50, including shipping. Quick check of the final bids for their current completed auctions show a lot go unbidded upon. When they make the sale, some of the lots go for almost $2 per mib, while some go for less than $1 per mib. So, not a high dollar racket. Let's have one more. Are these browns real? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bumblebee Posted September 15, 2012 Report Share Posted September 15, 2012 Any opinion on these fancies? They strike me as very similar to lots sold by youhave2bid2win: http://www.ebay.com/itm/VINTAGE-MARBLES-ANTIQUE-TOY-BENNINGTON-CLAY-LOT-OLD-FANCIES-/170909966391?pt=Marbles&hash=item27cb072037 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steph Posted September 15, 2012 Author Report Share Posted September 15, 2012 Same people. They changed one of their many ebay names to marbleconnection in honor of us continuing to point out their fraud. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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