Canadian Marble Mysterys

[Fire1981]

I scooped these off the Bottom of the EBay in 2003. I was so locked in on this auction there was no doubt it was mine. Sniper was set at $63.99. Bang ! They are now mine for $21. Here’s the kicker. They are Argentinian machine made marbles. But…..the Seller was in Toronto. So ? It’s a simple yet complex question to ask. How and when did these end up in Toronto 🔥

[Fire1981]

There’s more to come. I’ll dig out my Canadian Pelts🔥

RAR

[Ric]

I would guess the marbles were made by Tinka sometime after they opened in 1953 and probably arrived in Toronto on a truck, after being picked up at a Canadian sea port.

Here are a few earlier posts for reference:

 

[Steph]

There are also those transitionals which are most often seen in Canadian lots. 

I'm not aware of Canadian marbles makers so they had to do a lot of importing to meet the needs of the kids.  Some came from the U.S. but not all.   

The earliest Canadian import ad I remember was from MFC.  I just went down a rabbit hole trying to find it.   Will try to stay focused and find it after I finish fixing up that last bit of rabbit hole I found myself in.  

[Steph]

Found what I was looking for. Not an ad exactly, but something to drum up business in Canada.    Back when Google would give you "snippets" of books that they couldn't give you the full text of, I assembled these snippets into a mostly complete article about MFC in a Canadian trade journal.



 

[Steph]

I just rechecked Google Books to see if they would give me a better look at Volume 26.  

They didn't. 

But they give us Volume 27, 1911.  And there's some good MFC stuff in there.   

Bookseller & Stationer and Office Equipment Journal - Google Books

So, yeah, that's one way that Canadians got some American marbles.   Maybe we could find some Argentinian marbles in such ads as well.  But my brain is full so I will save the search for another day or let someone else have the fun. 

[Ric]

9 hours ago, Steph said:

There are also those transitionals which are most often seen in Canadian lots.

I think I know which transitionals you're talking about (pinched "pontil"?) and I think that many of them have now been attributed to Japan.

 

[Steph]

9 hours ago, Ric said:

I think I know which transitionals you're talking about (pinched "pontil"?) and I think that many of them have now been attributed to Japan.

 

Hard for me to recognize the red and white as particularly a Canadian example but probably!  I particularly like the ones in two nonwhite colors which can be matched to mushroom marble shades.  Anyway, an example of something Canada seemed to import more of than we did.  

[davesnothere]

1 minute ago, Steph said:

Hard for me to recognize the red and white as particularly a Canadian example but probably!  I particularly like the ones in two nonwhite colors which can be matched to mushroom marble shades.  Anyway, an example of something Canada seemed to import more of than we did.  

Exactly what I've been thinking re the transitionals. 

I'm trying to line up the colors on the machine mades with red to the transitionals. The blues greens etc are perfect the red seems off though, I have a stash of Asians to sort to find the red.

Canada wasn't effected by trade during the wars . My hunch is since we didn't make glass marbles the flow didn't stop.  

I find german handmades and Japanese marbles together a lot.

I mainly scour antique stores etc.