Electrifying! What is it?

[Marbleized]

Hi Everyone,  Finding time to really look at my marbles in jars and found one that caught my eye. It looks black and while in ordinary light.  When shining a light through it I can see a dark purple transparent base with white ribbon swirling throughout.  Under black light on it, it looks really amazing--thin green glowing threads zig-zagging everywhere.  It makes me feel like I'm looking at lightning within the marble or something out of Frankenstein's lab.  Does anyone know what this is?  The measurement is .59".  Thanks for your help.

[Marbleized]

Also, wondering if this next marble is the same brand. Same size. Green translucent base with swirls made of these threads and thinner ribbons that glow green.

[Steph]

black and white ribbons in a clear base?

That's different.  I like but it's not ringing any bells at all.

[Marbleized]

It is actually a purple clear base with white ribbon.  The base looks black in just natural light. But in strong light you can see the purple color.  There is a different strand of ribbon (more thread like) that glows.  The second additional marble is green with white ribbon that glows green.

[Steph]

"purple clear base"?  

As in transparent purple?  

It sure looks like I'm seeing the silver from behind the marble coming up through the marble.  


 

[Marbleized]

The base is entirely purple and translucent. It's really dark, but I can see into the middle as far as the ribbons will allow.  It's quite amazing to see lit up in real life.

[Steph]

You are freaking me out!  

Where is the silver coming from?

I guess it's a reflection from above ?

Well a dark purple base with a white swirl  _is_  a familiar combination.  But I think a lot of WV swirl makers did it. 

[Marbleized]

I’m pretty sure you were looking at a reflection. But, I wish I could take a good picture of it. When I look at the thin glowing threads running within the marble I feel like I’m an actor in a sci-fi movie! Electrifying!LOL!

[Marbleized]

Here is another pic that I tried to edit to bring out the lightning like threads.  Sorry about the over-exposure and the purplish black light.

[wvrons]

It looked clear base to me in every picture.  Identifications by pictures are exactly that, what the picture looks like not what the marble may look like in hand. If the picture is not accurate the id cannot be accurate. 

[Marbleized]

Exactly.  It is sooooo difficult to get a good photo of the UV stuff, for me at least.  I tried to describe it as best I could, but probably still too subjective.  I think it is like the Christensen dark purple slags.  It is so dark that you can't tell that it is purple. Not sure if that helps.

[Steph]

Don't worry about the UV stuff.  Just try the normal light picture in different lighting.   Maybe in a room with a different set of reflections.  Do you have something big and metallic overhead?  Something was making a wide silver reflection on the marble which interferes with us seeing it as it is.  

[Marbleized]

I probably shouldn't have included the green marble.  I just thought that is was of the same size, It had similar looking ribbons, and it had the same glow. Being that it came from the same jar, I thought perhaps this person maybe had a bag of marbles of the same brand and these two might have been from that same bag. Maybe grasping at straws.

[Steph]

Well the UV stuff might be important in a way ... could be from Vitrolite cullet, for example.   But first step is letting us see as close as possible what the marble looks like in hand in normal light. 

[Marbleized]

Hopefully, these are better.  Yes, I did have a LED strip above (my light box).

[wvrons]

That can happen in any machine made marble made from cullet. It is just a small piece of different cullet glass that melted and flowed with the main glass for the marble. 

What does the marble look like with normal white backlight ?  

[Marbleized]

Here are more with my digital camera.

 

Edited March 18, 2020 by Marbleized
same angle

[Marbleized]

Sorry, Didn't realize that I didn't turn it.  I was having difficulty focusing. Not enough lighting. Maybe I need to do this tomorrow in front of a window.

[wvrons]

Again there are 4 pictures and the first one looks much different that the other three. The first looks much more or better white than the next three. Every WV swirl company made these dark purple base and white swirl marbles. The key to separating what few can be, is how dark the purple is and exactly what shade the white is. Plus a few have some clear and some do not. Some are very dark purple, green, or brown all which can look black until close examination.  About one out of every four or six can be placed with one company without lots of doubt. They have very little value maybe 10-25 cents because they are so difficult to id and because they were so common, so many made and found.  No company put some small piece of glowing cullet in each marble to make this little thin stream of glowing glass in your marble. Cullet is dumped from dump trucks onto the ground or a concrete pad outside. It can have left over cullet from the last load. It can have dirt wood metal about anything mixed in the scrap glass(cullet). Most of the things which are not glass will burn up in the furnace. Some of the metal copper, beer caps, electric wire, etc. can end up in the marbles. Most of those marbles are discarded by the company. Your marble is not planned standard production to include the small this swirl of glowing glass. It was no experimental marble. It was just a fluke a mistake a non planned production that happened. Many different unplanned production marbles can happen every day or every hour, making 250 per minute 24hours a day. The purple or green swirls are from a WV swirl company, maybe the same company or maybe not ?  Several different traits can be used to separate WV swirl marbles.  Some are impossible to separate, but many are unique to only one company. Your purple marble with the small thin glowing swirl is no more valuable than one without it. Very few collectors will put a black light on it or study it enough to see the small thin glowing glass. There could have been one exactly like this or two or 100 or 500 ? At 250+ per minute a lot can happen and be produced in one minute. 

 I still do not know for sure what the actual marble looks like in your hand. Some pictures the white looks more gray, some the white is nice bright white, some the white looks clear, some the white looks thick and heavy, some the white looks thin ?  ???????   Every single one of the above can change or affect the identification. Is all the effort worth the 10-25 cents ? Probably not, but hopefully people who read this post will get some more marble knowledge or benefit from it.  

[Marbleized]

When I think about what you said recently about the amount of swirl being dependent on how long the molten glob was able to mix before it was sheared, it makes sense that this might be a product of a leftover stream of glass that made that fine thread of UV zig-zag everywhere in the marble.  It is definitely a different swirl from the larger ribbon.  Thanks for taking the time to examine my marble.  I certainly got way more than 25 cents worth of information.  As for the marble, it is a keeper for me.  Though I would love to have an awesome looking marble that is very valuable, I am, believe it or not, very happy with the unusual ones that I find along the way.  I'll just leave it at being a cool looking, WV swirl.  Would be fun to see if anyone else has something similar, though. Thanks!

[wvrons]

Correct it is not all about the money. Value can be different things. How do you value knowledge ? The damaged broken dirty marbles that I have dug for 20+ years were a lot of value to me. More important than any marble book. Plus some of them had never been seen by marble collectors since they were buried. One company owner could not remember what the marbles he produced looked like at all. Until four of us after two  years convinced him to give us permission dig them up. Ninety percent of their total production went to Puerto Rico. 

[Marbleized]

11 hours ago, wvrons said:

Correct it is not all about the money. Value can be different things. How do you value knowledge ? The damaged broken dirty marbles that I have dug for 20+ years were a lot of value to me. More important than any marble book. Plus some of them had never been seen by marble collectors since they were buried. One company owner could not remember what the marbles he produced looked like at all. Until four of us after two  years convinced him to give us permission dig them up. Ninety percent of their total production went to Puerto Rico. 

Speaking of books, I have a few, but I still think that nothing beats seeing and feeling the marbles "in hand".  Capturing the color and getting the right lighting takes a lot of time. It seems that you have a keen sense of color.  I can imagine how helpful that is when trying to identify marbles.  

[wvrons]

You are 100% correct. There is no substitute for actual hands on, seeing and feeling the actual thing. Also the books and internet can never replace the same results as talking marbles face to face with collectors and dealers in person at marble shows or anyplace, live in person.