Wanted : Marbles .... update ....

[snapshot]

Tom,

Train poop! Ha ha, I like that explanation. There is a rail road near by but not close enough for these to have fallen off of a train. I found them in a small area in my yard where I had suspected a burn barrel had been years ago and assumed they were related to that somehow. But I'm calling them train poop till a better explanation comes up.

That green & white marble has always been my favorite.

sherry

 

[snapshot]

Monsonant,

Thanks for all the info on my marbles! Every time I find on in the yard, I clean it off, look at it a while, then drop it in my marble cup. I've found a lot of them over the years but never investigated their origins. Except for green & white one, the clay and glazed ones, they all just look like regular ol' marbles to me.

sherry

 

[Flaschenjager]

Hi Sherry-
Your train poop, as a kid, we used to use them in our sling shots (wrist rockets) for shooting river rats (the size of small cars) and such along the railroad tracks. This was in Eastern Ohio in Steubenville and Mingo Junction. My dad, I think called them iron ore pellets and from what I remember, were melted down in the steel mills nearby. We always had a large bucket of them around, just in case we needed the ammo...hee hee.

 

[Monsonant]

Tom , Now thats a marble !! Looks like its pretty beat up but from the one photo ( with marbles sometimes you have to see all sides to make a proper ID ) I have two choices its either a Peltier Swirl (Ottawa IL. ) circa mid to late 1920s or a Christensen Swirl (Payne and Cambridge OH. ) same period . Since the pattern is so crisp and without much "blending" (one color glass will not blend with another , its just an effect caused by one color laying over / under another ) I would say Christensen , I have seen those colors used by both companies . If it were Peltier and in very good Condition , not Mint mind you , it would be worth a few hundred bucks . If it were Christensen and in very good Condition , not Mint again, it would be worth considerably less .Post a couple more pics of the other sides d.e.a.

 

[snapshot]

Flaschenjager,

Ok, I feel stupid as it all seems to make sense now. There was a foundry on the other side of those RR tracks years ago and the folks who worked there, lived here. Guess they had the stuff in their pockets when they got home and just pitched in the yard. I'll be digging that part of the yard up as soon as it stops raining!

Thanks for the insight,
sherry

 

[snapshot]

Monsonant,

Sorry to be such a bother but you seem to have such a wealth of information. Anyway, I know that this marble is worthless but you mentioned an "onion skin" in a previous post and it made me think of this one because the coloration seems to be on the surface only. I had always assumed that the colors in a marble went all the way through. If this particular one was not so badly broken, I would still believe that. What sort of marble is this, if you don't mind educating me on the subject?

curious as always,
sherry

 

[craigc90]

Flaschenjager
I grew up in Mingo Junction also and would gather iron ore pellets under the highway overpass by the Football stadium.We would sit on the bridge and shoot at bottles in the creek. We probably broke hundreds of d-patent cokes. What were we thinking. [][]
Small world

 

[craigc90]

Since we are on the subject can you tell me if any of these are onion skins or luts they all have ground pontil marks except the one I think is an oxblood.

 

[Monsonant]

Sherry , A quick history lesson ... Pretty sure that's an early machine made by Christensen Agate Co (Payne and Cambridge OH. ) It was called an American Agate , kind of a rough attempt to make a glass copy of the more expensive , Imported hand ground mineral Agate marbles. Colored glass was more expensive than white. Tin is added to the glass mixture , called "Metal" to make it white and Gold to make it red . This marble was hand gathered meaning that a rod was dipped into the molten Metal and then held above the marble machine where it would flow off the rod. another worker would have a pair of shears and cut the dripping glass in to individual blobs that would fall into the machine and form the marble. Who ever made your marble knew what he was doing , the two colors were melted together in the same crucible and it took a bit of skill to just get the more expensive red glass just on the surface of the marble. When glass is molten you can not really tell what color is what , it is just glowing red orange.. but the different colors seem to glow in slightly different shades. I am pretty sure an experienced gaffer could tell where the color was .. at least for a while. As more marbles were made from the same batch it would get more and more mixed together .. marbles at the start of a run would look much different those at the end ............... anyway on most of the pre 1940s marbles the color usually does run through all the way through like you thought . Your marble is one of the few exceptions. In the US in the 50's they had to produce them cheaply to compete with Japan who was flooding the market with cheap marbles . The learned how to Veneer " coat " white marbles with a thin layer of color . This worked for a while but the glass was soft because of this process and the surface cracked easily reveling the white base glass. This made the Japanese marbles " the Cat Eyes" more desirable for playing with . That's why you see so many of them around . The 50s was pretty much the end of the great American machine made marbles.

 

[Monsonant]

Craig , Ill start at the top and the go left to right , the top three are Handmade Latticino swirls , yes the next is an akro agate Oxblood , next to that it looks like a handmade coreless swirl and below that a tightly wound Divided Ribbon Core often mistaken for a Solid Core . They are the 3 most commonly found types of Hand Made marbles. Onionskins are made by rolling a clear cane (handmades are mostly cut and formed from a single cane that is built up with the different stages (layers ) of the desired design ) in colored powered glass and then reheated to form the "blotchy "onionskin pattern . The color is just on the surface of an onion , most often very hard to tell but sometimes you can look into the "pontil " (cut ) mark and see that they are clear based , held up to bright light you can kind of tell also . "Lutz" type marbles have what looks like patches or stripes of gold under the surface . d.e.a.