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Not much to say except WOO HOO


lstmmrbls

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I wonder if anyone was allowed or bothered to take the extra time to fiddle around with the machinery To try and make patterns at the time they were simply making marbles to stuff in bags or boxes for kids to beat up?? Personally I do not believe so.  Heck even Jabo (until recently for collectors) or Champion hardly tried to manipulate for fancy patterns.. Even the cool wirepulls made at Champion were a happy accident. IMO If patterns were a sought after product I would have to believe multiswirled corks would be more common than single twists  Or flames would be more common than simple swirls.  I think it is just the collector that places a real value to the killer patterns not so much kid putting them in the ring.  I could be totally off base but it just seems like it was the adults that really gave(give) value to killer patterns.

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I'd wager the mass production of the items probably lent little time/desire to 'fiddle around with the machinery' and specifically tweak the patterns

Where the neat patterns/value came into play, would be on the schoolyard, or trading marbles.  Back in my day (geez I'm starting to sound like and old man) a cool pattern/color was more desirable than a plain(er) type even from the same manufacturer.  Hence, some of the nice pattern ones were damaged because they saw a lot of action as some kids favorite.  But I'd estimate 1/100 or even 1/1000 from some manufacturers really stood out compared to their more generic counterparts.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

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I think they did it in a way to make the most marbles as quickly as they could with no effort to increase the "flame" look that we find desirable.  I know CAC boxers and Alley owners found the busy patterns interesting but I really do not believe equipment was manipulated to increase the likelihood of nice flame patterns.  Totally accidental IMHO.  Just a side effect of making marbles with a small glass stream.

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Yea, I'm not suggesting it was like "let's start making sweet flames now" or "let's switch over to octopi". They are random swirls, no doubt, chance is most of it with respect to any particular pattern. I was only suggesting that a good glass team could setup their tanks, stream and shear operations to tilt the odds towards producing the kind of marbles they wanted. I doubt Alley wanted his marbles to look like Christensen's or vice versa. Surely, companies tried to distinguish themselves with glass quality and colors too. Isn't that why we can still distinguish many of them today?

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