Sorting marbles

[jerryg]

Huge help.....Thanks again guys!

By the way....If you are going to buy a black light, get an LED do not waste your time and money on an "old fashion bulb" they do not work.

Well, I've had a florescent style black light for years and it works just fine. I wouldn't mind an LED black light, but the places I've found online are way too expensive.

[Popeye]

Well, I've had a florescent style black light for years and it works just fine. I wouldn't mind an LED black light, but the places I've found online are way too expensive.

I just purchased a small hand held florescent style today and yes indeed they work great too. I can't wait until it gets dark so I can check out my collection.

[BlueWhaleKing]

The only German handmade I have is a single blue Bennington. I'm glad I have it but it would be pretty lonely if I disposed of everything else! But that will change when my latest order arrives, more clays and Benningtons plus my very first German handmade glass marble! It's a latticino core with blue and pinkish stripes on the outside.

[Al]

Ahhhh,.the adventure begins.

[BlueWhaleKing]

I only have a loose system of sorting.
All the cheap filler (most cat's eyes, clearies, and opaques) is separated from the other modern machine mades, which are mostly Vacors. The old machine made are also separate, but I only have six of those right now, all ones that I've found. Shooters are in their own bag.
My most important bag is full of handmades and game-size stone and mineral marbles. My larger mineral spheres are still in the sampler set box. My handmades are mostly modern Chinese, but I do have that one blue Bennington I mentioned.
All the marbles that I've found are together, old or not. I like them better, even if they're "cheap filler." I keep them with my two modern "art glass" marbles.

[Pete]

I have several big jars here to go through and they are nearly all old. When I first got them I thought I'd find some "Vacors" (Read "Mega Marbles") but there really haven't been many. I'm wondering where you get your marbles that most are Mexican? I go antiqueing on the East end of Long Island which I've always found to be a hotspot for old Americal and German marbles. I have them coming out my ears!

[BlueWhaleKing]

I buy them in stores, my Vacors are all modern.

[Pete]

Oh, I guess I gave up on stores. Always garbage, except Mega Marbles which I buy right from Mega Fun. I always buy my marbles from people who have accumulated them over a long time. Sometimes I wish there was more Vacor in there, especially the old stuff like scorpions, sunsets, frosty rainbows. I also think some of the older crystal based styles like halloween and sunflower are nice.

[smithassignment]

""Bored in jury duty so I thought I'd start a thread about sorting marbles - I've done it enough!

The first thing I do when I have a big lot of marbles to go through is separate them into 4 groups: clearies, Opaques, cat's-eyes (that's the correct spelling as per Peterson & castle's guide) and everything else.

Next I turn out the lights and black light each group:

Clearies: I cull everything that fluoresces. I sell mint Vaseline marbles for $10 each. Good Vaselines will be yellow or green and the stronger the glow the better. Them I turn the lights back on and look for weird colors. pink and purple clearies are rare. My ice collects ruby glass, so I pull the red for her too. She has a clear glass Apple she's filling with ruby marbles.

Opaques: I cull everything that fluoresces. Fluorescent Opaques are called custard glass and are usually yellow. I also look for Moonies and flinties amongst the Opaques. these have tiny crescent Windows at the poles. Then I combine clearies and Opaques and sell them by the box full.

Cat's-eyes are fluoresced (there are yellow and orange fluorescent cat's-eyes) then sorted into piles, depending on what I find. If I find some of what follows, I start a pile of them:

Single color American-made cat's
Wavy 4 or 5 vanes (Vitros - be on the lookout for hybrids and aventurine)
3-V cat's-eyes with wide vanes (I like these with vanes reaching from the center almost to the surface)
VDM virgin cat's-eyes with wide vanes
Peewee cat's-eyes
Black cat's-eyes
Purple cat's-eyes
Bananas
St. Mary's & cross-through cat's-eyes
9 vane cat's-eyes
Cat's-eyes in colored glass (Chinese bottle tint isn't colored. True transparent colored glass is rare - the recently retired Swamp Thing Mega Marble was a cat's-eye in colored glass. I predict it will be collected.)

Anything else goes into a pile I'll call "uninteresting cat's-eyes."

The everything else pile is going to have the meat and potatoes of the group in it. A good place to start is with your black light. Many people will collect anything that glows, but be on the lookout for "ade" bases (lemon, lime, cherry, orange, carnelian) or moss agates (patches on a fluorescent base).

Then I kinda eyeball it and pull the collectible stuff out. This is easier said than done, it helps to be able to ID stuff on sight, but that comes with time.

In general, white-based marbles are less desirable. Any marble with some kind of pattern is better than a random swirl. (Think NLR, corkscrew, Rainbow). Collectible marbles tend to have some kind of pattern that makes them identifiable. That's not to say a swirl can't be collectible - oftentimes there will be a sought-out color that makes it so, so learn what oxblood, aventurine, egg yolk and silver look like.

They just let us go! Bye!""

So what is the conclusion of it?

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[smithassignment]

Bored in jury duty so I thought I'd start a thread about sorting marbles - I've done it enough!

The first thing I do when I have a big lot of marbles to go through is separate them into 4 groups: clearies, Opaques, cat's-eyes (that's the correct spelling as per Peterson & castle's guide) and everything else.

Next I turn out the lights and black light each group:

Clearies: I cull everything that fluoresces. I sell mint Vaseline marbles for $10 each. Good Vaselines will be yellow or green and the stronger the glow the better. Them I turn the lights back on and look for weird colors. pink and purple clearies are rare. My ice collects ruby glass, so I pull the red for her too. She has a clear glass Apple she's filling with ruby marbles.

Opaques: I cull everything that fluoresces. Fluorescent Opaques are called custard glass and are usually yellow. I also look for Moonies and flinties amongst the Opaques. these have tiny crescent Windows at the poles. Then I combine clearies and Opaques and sell them by the box full.

Cat's-eyes are fluoresced (there are yellow and orange fluorescent cat's-eyes) then sorted into piles, depending on what I find. If I find some of what follows, I start a pile of them:

Single color American-made cat's
Wavy 4 or 5 vanes (Vitros - be on the lookout for hybrids and aventurine)
3-V cat's-eyes with wide vanes (I like these with vanes reaching from the center almost to the surface)
VDM virgin cat's-eyes with wide vanes
Peewee cat's-eyes
Black cat's-eyes
Purple cat's-eyes
Bananas
St. Mary's & cross-through cat's-eyes
9 vane cat's-eyes
Cat's-eyes in colored glass (Chinese bottle tint isn't colored. True transparent colored glass is rare - the recently retired Swamp Thing Mega Marble was a cat's-eye in colored glass. I predict it will be collected.)

Anything else goes into a pile I'll call "uninteresting cat's-eyes."

The everything else pile is going to have the meat and potatoes of the group in it. A good place to start is with your black light. Many people will collect anything that glows, but be on the lookout for "ade" bases (lemon, lime, cherry, orange, carnelian) or moss agates (patches on a fluorescent base).

Then I kinda eyeball it and pull the collectible stuff out. This is easier said than done, it helps to be able to ID stuff on sight, but that comes with time.

In general, white-based marbles are less desirable. Any marble with some kind of pattern is better than a random swirl. (Think NLR, corkscrew, Rainbow). Collectible marbles tend to have some kind of pattern that makes them identifiable. That's not to say a swirl can't be collectible - oftentimes there will be a sought-out color that makes it so, so learn what oxblood, aventurine, egg yolk and silver look like.

They just let us go! Bye!

Will you please give me the conclusion?

__________________________________________
Best Assignment Help in uk.

[JenniferT]

it's Websites like this (thanks Pete) and collectors posting pictures that's motivating to 'go through the archives' of marbles to find something similar.

[JenniferT]

helping stick this thread!

[Mari]

Thank you for your post. I learned a couple of things or more. Sorting is like a meditation for me, and I do love categories. Speaking of cat's eyes, I try to sort bananas in a different box. History bananas of anyone? Favorites?

[fotso]

I think cat's-eyes look best when the axis is centered and the vanes are equidistant and nearly reach the surface. All this interest in cat's-eyes has me thinking I should look into carrying the cat's-eye book. I'll find out if it's still on the market.

Here's some info from it. The spelling they settled on is "cat's-eye", which is the spelling according to Webster's unabridged dictionary. They defined cat's-eye marbles as "a machine-made marble with clear body glass and vanes or stripes on the inside. These were made with anywhere from 1 to 10 vanes. The vanes were paddle shaped, strands or fat cores."

At the time the book was published, MK St. Mary's cats were really the only cat's-eye collected. Their book opened up a new facet of marble collecting. The book discussed hybrid cat's, 8 and 9 vane cat's, cross-throughs, horseshoe cat's and more seriously and as collectibles for the first time. The reaction among a lot of collectors was "Hogwash! Cat's-eyes are junk!" Others thought, "Every dog has it's day..." (And here it is!) I was on the cat's-eye bandwagon from the start - you don't have to try very hard to convince me to collect something

As time has gone by, I've found the early 21st Century stuff getting very hard to find, and more and more people remember cat's-eyes as the marbles of their youth. So cat's-eyes I have overlooked for a long time, I'm starting to look out for.

The book shows a plate of Peltier cat's-eyes (Bananas and transparent Rainbos like Sunset) and I think it says Bananas were the first cat's-eyes (though Vacor de Mexico claims to have made them during the 1930's). Peltier did make other Cat's-Eyes. An ex-worker told me and sold me a jar containing some with inflated fat white cores.

[Al]

Nice summary - thanks.