Sorting

[budwas]

I'm sure this question has been addressed but I'll ask anyway. 

I'm curious how most of you sort marbles. First black light them? Cull all the obvious new cat eyes and seriously damaged ones? Put everything with a cut line in one pile? Two cut lines in another?

Ok, I'm sure a book could be written on this and someone should.

Thanks

Bud

 

[Steph]

Funny you mention blacklight.   I still do blacklight in early stages.  I wonder what %-age of us do that.  Since I recognize makers of most marbles, I now mostly sort that way.  But the blacklight comes out soon if not first thing.  

If I have a lot of damage, I put them back on the shelf and say "later" because I hate that part of the cull process ... I don't want to get rid of any of them.  Eventually I put those in a "damaged" jar.  

The boringest, non-glowing,  3-vane, coke-bottle glass Asian cat's eyes go into a "don't care about" jar.  The six-vane Asians and the four-vane Asians and the Americans get a different sort.   But yeah ... probably pull cats out at an early stage.  

And the marbles I recognize by maker get put in their maker's boxes. 

And then I'm left with the pile I don't recognize by maker and some of them may end up in my "mystery swirl" or "mystery patch" box.  But it takes them a long time to get there.  There's a batch which is currently shoved under the bed which I've been procrastinating on.  

 

 

So, my unhelpful answer is that I do a quick sort of what I recognize and what doesn't make me cry because of damage, and the rest I deal with sporadically.  

 

 

[Steph]

As to one cutline versus two cutlines ... what do you mean by one cutline?  

The marbles I think of as single seam are not ones I see often enough to use them as something I try to sort by.

 

I really should have  thought about and edited that post above before I posted it.

 

I sort between swirls and non-swirls. 

 

And the non-swirls could be various patch and/or ribbons style marbles with two-cutlines.  And among these non-swirls, I sort out the foreign ones first.  And then I have fun with the American makers. 

 

[budwas]

Steph, some older marbles I see have only one cut line and some have two, one on each pole. 

The more I learn I find myself pulling the marbles I know but often find myself going thru jars or bags of marbles for the hundredth time looking for something I know I have seen and know I have one somewhere. That's after seeing one that someone has posted here. I'm sure I'm not alone in this. Lol

[Al Oregon]

If I were sorting slags or striped transparents/opaques (or any similar type of marbles that could be by 2-3 (or more) different makers, I would be doing the one-seam, two-seam idea of yours.  As Steph mentioned, others are usually sorted out by company and style - Pelts, Akro corks and other obvious styles.  Patches, to me, is a whole other ballgame in ID'ing.  I've given up on those but, after studying the various tips, etc. on the marble boards, you should be able to sort those by specific patterns. 

[J_Ding]

Funny.  I read this just after sorting slags for, I think somewhere short of a thousand times.  I always 'see' things differently the next time around.  I almost always find something interesting in there if I let time get in the way between sorts. This time, I had just extracted another little Pelt slag in great condition (back lit it is as yellow as I can get them to go).  Missed it the first 999 times around, as I often do, because either I didn't have the right light, or the right frame of mind or the right angle or was distracted by work/phone/news/music/fatigue (called marble brain around here) or something.  I'm the sort of collector that sorts and sorts again, and shakes it all down, and gets rid of marbles I don't want eventually...but not until I am sure sure sure the sort is done.  Even then, you know I've missed stuff, passed on things previously, and found some real oddballs that way. Oh, the ones that got away...