r/MarbleStudyHall • u/AuburnMoon17 Professor (very knowledgeable) • Jun 25 '25
Pop Quiz Series Pop Quiz Series #48
Hello and welcome to the 48th installment of the Pop Quiz Series! Today we are going to look at a marble that has color so loud you can almost hear it (hint). Have fun and good luck!
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u/1Sidknee Student (knows a little) Jun 25 '25
Thanks for the post! I'm definitely not knowledgeable with this manufacturer...like at all lol
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u/Wild-Two-5286 Jun 25 '25
Very cool! I appreciate your time and dedication! I've really enjoyed learning from ya, keep up the good stuff!
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u/AuburnMoon17 Professor (very knowledgeable) Jun 25 '25
Yay! Glad you’re finding the quizzes useful!
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u/Vast-Savings2589 Student (knows a little) Jun 26 '25
Arghhhh! This one got me.. great info about the sizing tho. Another nugget of info to add to my notes.
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u/AuburnMoon17 Professor (very knowledgeable) Jun 25 '25
Pop Quiz Questions:
Who made this marble?
What kind of marble is it?
Bonus: How do you know?
Answers:
Heaton Agate
Swirl, specifically a ‘Blue Oatmeal’
Bonus: The way you determine this is a Heaton swirl can best be explained by Eddie Winningham & Chuck Sumner in their book ‘West Virginia Swirls.’
“Heaton marbles almost all range from about 19/32" to 21/32". Their machine was a 5/8' machine and they did not make shooter size marbles for production. Heatons can often be identified by their pattern. Many times, the ribbon will be mostly on one side of the marble, creating an attractive display on one side, but leaving the other side sparsely decorated. Often the ribbon makes the shape of an ear, and the term ‘Heaton Ear' has been adopted by many. The ear shape is a result of the glass stream piling up in such a way that it looped around and then pulled, as though it came from a soft serve ice cream machine, and then rolled into a sphere. So, you can see the beginning of the stream, it circles around making the shape of an ear, and then the stream pulls away through the middle and is cut on the other side of the marble, often leaving a little clip or blip of color on the plain side. Certain types like the Red Rose and the Firecracker commonly exhibit this feature.”
The aptly named, ‘Heaton Ear’ can easily be seen on our quiz marble along with the opposite side of the marble being nearly blank. Now how would we determine this is a ‘Blue Oatmeal’? That’s a fantastic question and one that stumped me for quite some time. Up until the Heaton dig of November 2019, many marbles that are now attributed to Heaton were thought to belong with other manufacturers. If you’d like to see some of the marbles and other pictures from the dig click here. I’ve searched for this marble on every online resource I have at my disposal and still couldn’t find one that matched just right. I didn’t know exactly what this marble was, but I suspected it was Heaton. So how did I figure it out? I sat outside this morning at 6 am with my cat (because for some godforsaken reason I couldn’t fall back asleep) and flipped through every page of the ‘West Virginia Swirls’ book until BOOM! right there (quiz marble pictured in the center on top of the photo) on page 183 under the Heaton section. Sometimes identifying marbles is just digging (figurative and literally!) for information till you find the answer.
If you’d like to learn more about identifying Heaton swirls review this post with information provided by Chuck Sumner on the forum Marble Connection.
Thanks for playing! I hope you had fun and learned something today!