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Memberships How You Can Help While the
American Marble & Toy Museum is an Akron based community organization,
supported by local government, local community foundations and the good
citizens of Akron, much of the information we hold on toy marbles is
likely to be over the head of the general public. It is however among the
finest sources of information to assist marble collectors in identifying
their marbles, by date, company of manufacture and relative estimates of
rarity – all of these help to define a marbles value on the open market. While it’s
unlikely that members of the marble collecting community might visit our
museum in Akron on a regular basis to view our changing exhibits, we know
that many of you come to nearby Ohio cities for two major marble conventions,
one in Columbus in August and one in New Philadelphia in February. It is
our hope that you would take a short detour and visit our museum. To encourage the
largest possible participation by the marble collecting community and to
assist them in ways unavailable by any other source today, we are
preparing to turn our website www.AkronMarbles.com
into a virtual museum of marbles for collectors. To help the
museum, Brian Graham and Michael Cohill have turned over the copyrights of
all their existing publications, all of their manuscripts and all future
works on marbles to the American Marble & Toy Museum – their use to
be governed by our board of directors. Included in this is all their
content on our website right now and anything posted their in the future.
The
(soon-to-be) All New www.AkronMarbles.com Coming
in January 2003 For
marble collectors who become members of the American Marble & Toy
Museum there will be a whole new section area just for you. Details will
be forthcoming. MARBLES
IDENTIFICATION AREA We
intent to post on-line the most comprehensive collection of marble
photographs ever assembled as part of our Marbles Identification Area. Photographs Bill
Tow, marble photographer extraordinaire has signed on to be our in-house
marbles photographer. Anyone who’s seen Bill’s photographs of marbles
understands how important his work will become in helping collectors
identify marbles. The crisp, clear, details he can expose and the true to
life colors he’s capable of capturing will make Better
than ID Guide Books In a hard copy,
full color, identification guidebook there are obvious limits to the
numbers of marbles and multiple views of a marble one can put into a book.
This is not a problem with an Internet site. We can post literally
thousands of full color photographs so as to give the most complete
inventory of a company’s marbles that has ever been attempted. The
Range of Variation Possible One of the most
important lessons in the identification of marbles is seeing the wide
range of variation possible in the same style of marbles produced by the
same company. At times when collectors view marbles from opposite ends of
the range – they might perceive these two marbles as coming from
different companies in different time periods. By use of the Internet with
it’s ability to post thousands of full color images we can give full
expression to the range of variation possible, thereby greatly assisting
in the identification of marbles for collectors. Listed
by Company of Manufacture These photographs
will be arranged by the company of manufacture in much the same way
collectors are now accustomed to viewing them in identification and price
guidebooks. Special
ID Lessons In addition to
listing the marbles by companies there will be special pages devoted to
lessons in how to identify, for instance, hand-gathered machine-made
marbles from gob fed marbles, or hand-made and hand-gathered marbles from
hand-made marbles from canes. GLOSSARY
OF TERMS We’ve developed
a glossary of marble terms that is presently 22 pages and growing.
Included in this glossary are not only all the terms collectors presently
use, but also the more accurate terms used to describe the same concepts
from the historic record, the US patent record and the present day glass
and ceramics industry. You will also find short bios on all the marble
companies, all the principle marble men, their patents and so much more.
Of special interest will be the names given to marbles – like onion
skins, bumble bees, etc. with each written definition will be a color
thumbnail picture that will enlarge to a larger picture – again these
will be photographs taken by Bill Tow – and these will also be linked to
the Identification Pages where you can rapidly move to see, for instance
the range in variation possible. FOR
THE ADVANCED COLLECTOR Your ability to
ID a marble can be dramatically improved by gaining a fuller understanding
of the manufacturing process that created all of these marbles. The
US and Foreign Patent Records Unknown to most
collectors – all the marbles manufactured in the United States between
1884 and the 1950’s were patented products. For the past 12 years
we’ve been researching the patent record for marbles. We now have many
hundreds of patents that we are going to put on-line. In some cases we
will also provide a written commentary to supplement the material in the
most important patents. THE
HISTORIC TIME LINE Advertisements A good way to help identify the age and date of a marble is through the hundreds of advertisements we’ve collected. For instance, we’ve pulled every marbles ad from all the Sears, Montgomery Wards and Butler Bros. retail catalogs. This accounts of only a percentage of advertisements we’ve discovered. As these are all properly cited it will help, for instance, collectors to not only date a marble but they will then be able to use the citation in ways that might help them to sell that same marble on ebay™. PUBLICATIONS In February of
2003 our museum has a special treat planned for our on-line members. In 1928 during the
marbles tournament season, the Scripts Howard Newspaper Syndicate
published a 10 week serial called “Tom Dare and The Marbles
Tournament.” The author was Howard Stephenson, Director of The National
Marbles Tournament. If you are familiar with the movie ‘A Christmas
Story,’ about the little boy that wanted a Red Rider BB Gun for
Christmas, this charming story about marbles is in that same venue and
voice. We are pleased to
announce that The E.W. Scripps Company, successor to Scripps Howard, has
given the American Marble & Toy Museum permission to reprint this
serial in all 10 parts for our members. The
History of The American Toy Industry Many of you
already know that Brian Graham and Michael Cohill are in the process of
publishing six books covering the history of American marbles from the
1880’s to the 1950’s. And, as previously mention, Brian and Michael
have generously donated all the copyrights for these works to the American
Marble & Toy Museum. As an incentive
for becoming members the American Marble & Toy Museum is going to
publish these works on their website in a serial form before they are
released in hard copy version for the general public. MEMBERSHIP
INFORMATION We are presently
working with a professional web design firm who are donating their
services to make the American Marble & Toy Museum one of the finest
internet sites available to marble collectors. Once we have all
the details worked out we will post how you can become a member of our
museum. Our target date is after the first of the new year.
So keep checking back. WE
NEED YOUR HELP The success of the
American Marble & Toy Museum will depend in part upon the
participation of collectors. We are very excited about these long held
dreams finally coming to fruition and hope you will be with us. For Keeps, Brian Graham, President Michael Cohill, Statutory Agent
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