What percentage of WVS were made by Alley ?

[Fire1981]

My guess is 75%. Do you think that's close🔥

RAR

[Ric]

Here is one way to think about it. There were nine companies that made WVS, if you exclude Alox of MO.

Ravenswood (1928-1955) 27 yrs
Alley (1929-1947) 18 yrs
Alox (ca 1938-1948) 10 yrs
Champion (1938-2005) 67 yrs
Playrite (1940-1947) 7 yrs
Jackson (1945-1946) 1 yr
Cairo (1946-1952) 6 yrs
Heaton (1946-1971) 25 yrs
Davis (1947-1948) 1 yr
Mid-Atlantic (1990-2004) 14 yrs

There were about 166-176 company years of WVS marble production (including or excluding Alox of MO). If we assume that yearly production was the same at all factories (it was certainly not) we can calculate that Alley would be responsible for 10.2% of production. I would guess this figure is low, since Alley was very productive and some of the other companies were not, but I would guess that Alley did not produce more than 25-35% of WVSs.

[Fire1981]

Thanks for doing the math 🔥

RAR

[Tommy]

Let's dive deeper 

Industrial marbles ? That is what kept the long standing marble makers in business after the foreign marble fiasco 😤 ?

Was Ravenswood and Heaton  producing swirls the whole time or was there a time when it was just for industrial purposes 🤔 

[Ric]

@Fire1981 No problem, it was kinda fun - a different perspective, huh? Honestly, before I did this little calculation, I would have thought more too. But 1-out-of-3 or 1-out-of-4 vintage WVSs being Alley seems about right, maybe a little low, especially if you exclude Alox, JABO, DAS and SMM from the WVS equation.

 

@Tommy All good questions. Of course, the ideal would be to know exactly how many WVSs were produced by each company, period, but you have to start somewhere. 🙂

 

 

 

 

 

[Al Oregon]

When I was first collecting WV swirls in the early 2000's before a lot of iD'ing was done, I took 20 (25 count plastic boxes) full of WV swirls (500 total) - mostly random - to the Texas Show and met with Ron and Ric to get them ID'd. I think by the time we finished, over half were ID'd as Champion. Just one example but the marbles were random ones that I had bought off eBay or at the few shows I had been to back at that time.