Good question John, as the title implies, the beads I show in the first assemblage of pictures are "mostly" translucent, not all though. The beads that are almost transparent are sometimes called "bottle-glass" Kiffas because it was believed they were re-ground bottle glass. Others have pointed out that these are more than likely re-ground Czech glass beads and about 2 years ago I pointed out that many of them fluoresce under black light proving that a large portion of these beads are re-ground Czech "Vaseline" glass beads.
There are, of course, many Kiffa beads made from other glass bead cores, many of the powdered glass beads coming from Oualata are made using "foreign" cores including Venetian "green-hearts".....
check out the link where samples of the core types are illustrated in older Czech glass sample booklets.......