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A Blue Ace?


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Thanks Steph,

It's still a bit confusing,the marbles in the sample box Moss agate at post#9,looks a lot like Ades to me,with the wispy white.

In American machine made marbles at page #17,is an advertisement,which said:Moss Agate is made of moonstone opalescent glass,at the same page, another advertisement which said:Aces with translucent milky glass.

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Thanks Steph,

It's still a bit confusing,the marbles in the sample box Moss agate at post#9,looks a lot like Ades to me,with the wispy white.

In American machine made marbles at page #17,is an advertisement,which said:Moss Agate is made of moonstone opalescent glass,at the same page, another advertisement which said:Aces with translucent milky glass.

Yes, there are a lot of Ades in that box.

Ades is a collector name. Akro's name for Ades was Moss Agates.

And there were a lot of other marbles that collectors have different names for which Akro sold as Moss Agates. The Moss Agate was the top of their line. The name Moss Agate is sort of boring to collectors now, but Akro sold a lot of interesting marbles under that name.

Good chance the marbles which some call Ringers were also Moss Agates. (One color + wispy white + some clear glass + maybe some cloudy glass if you look far enough in.)

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See, that's the thing. We could sort through all the ads and find the most logical explanations for all the information and get the Akro Ace and Moss Agate names completely straight ... but it wouldn't matter.

Too many collectors are attached to the names like Lemonade, Cherry-Ade, Ace (for some of the less colorful Moss Agates),etc.

People don't care that the actual Aces were a different kind of marble which very often look like Prize Names.

The collector naming traditions are so well-established for Akro that I don't think people care that much about what Akro actually called the marbles.

Akro Specials is another case. I can call them Tri-Color Agates all day long, but people like to call three-color corks Specials. We're not going to change habits by pointing out evidence that Akro used Special as a catch-all term.

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I spent some time over the weekend looking through the archives, pics, and tutorials and have a better understanding of what you're saying.

It's less of a situation of "I want to call it an Ace because that sounds cooler" and more of a "Alan gave me the appreciation for marbles, and now I always want go to his page for identifications" and feel the need to be stubborn about it.

Still learning and I do care. :)

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I tried finding an Ace, I think I have two maybe three, both of these have an opalescense in the base with a blue and a black ribbon, are these correct?

I also noticed in the ad for Aces, that yellow is not listed, did it maybe come out later after that ad? I'm pretty sure I have a yellow one as well.

(That black one is very difficult to photograph)

post-78-0-23066000-1435581242_thumb.jpg

post-78-0-65135400-1435581318_thumb.jpg

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I spent some time over the weekend looking through the archives, pics, and tutorials and have a better understanding of what you're saying.

It's less of a situation of "I want to call it an Ace because that sounds cooler" and more of a "Alan gave me the appreciation for marbles, and now I always want go to his page for identifications" and feel the need to be stubborn about it.

Still learning and I do care. :)

:)

I tried finding an Ace, I think I have two maybe three, both of these have an opalescense in the base with a blue and a black ribbon, are these correct?

I also noticed in the ad for Aces, that yellow is not listed, did it maybe come out later after that ad? I'm pretty sure I have a yellow one as well.

(That black one is very difficult to photograph)

Yeah, they do seem to be a challenge to photograph. Black is the most common one people recognize. Congratulations on the blue.

I'm not sure about yellow. That scan might not have true color. Check out the Ace color in this scan: http://marbleconnection.com/topic/17380-akro-aces-early-1930s/

But they at least had "yellowish" ones.

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I like to keep both of those ad scans around. Since I don't have the original I don't know which is closest. But both have color info I like to refer to. The clip Galen shows has the green in the Lifesaver. It's hard to see in the other scan.

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I can imagine a tiny hint of a glow in the ones in the ad. Some luster. Some grain. Maybe. But I think a lot of Aces were opaque, in spite of intentions.

I hope I don't sound too much like a broken record when I say that's related to why I think/believe/suspect the Aces didn't last very long. I don't actually have confirmation that they didn't last long, but there don't seem to be all that many of them, even considering how many are likely stuck in with folks' Prize Names.

I suspect they were trying to copy Peltier's Realers. But whatever their inspiration was, I don't think they were very successful in the quality control on these. There are some completely opaque ones which I think were likely from Ace runs. I think they had a hard time getting the opalescence right and gave it up earlier rather than later.

But I can't prove any of that.

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It does make sense, and maybe on the opposite end of the spectrum as well, with less white, they may be stuck in with Spirals.

I have a red Spiral that has the thinnest ribbon of opalescense running through it. I keep it with my other Spirals.

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