Heaton dig 9/19/2020

[cheese]

This is the back of my truck after coming home from West Virginia. All the buckets except the far right one are Alley. The right one and the big black truck box are Heatons. The bag is champion furnace marbles from a barrel that was at Champion years ago. The jar is full of Heaton Red Roses. The cardboard box is also Alley. I shoveled the heatons out of the big black box into buckets and got over 50 gallons but they are dirty and there is glass and cullet mixed in. Probably will amount to 25 or 30 gallons of marbles once cleaned. It was a heck of a trip.


Here's my truck bed





Some of the nicer Heatons I grabbed out of the shovel and stuck in my pocket while digging.





The contents of the big black truck box. The ones on top are dirtier than the rest because I was hitting more dirt towards the end. Earlier on every shovel was nearly nothing but marbles.





This was Val's first dig, here she is getting Heaton fever





David Tamulevich and Scott (forgot his last name) and another (forgot her name too)





Ron filling his bucket and Nola behind him





No wonder she was complaining about her back the next day!





Some more of the diggers









I blew out my jeans in the most major fashion possible. Didn't stop me from digging though





Me down in the hole started by David T. pulling out shovel fulls of marbles. I'm standing and digging in water. Val caught a pic of me just as I dumped my other boot out.






Filling myself a bucket after filling everyone else's. There was a lot in this hole, we cleaned it out pretty well.

[RVRoamer66]

Excellent! 2nd pic down brought back my marble shooting days. Glad I saw your post.

[villagenut]

You were IN your element for sure......but just how does a person come upon such a marble horde anyways? That's just a crazy amount of them.

[cheese]

You were IN your element for sure......but just how does a person come upon such a marble horde anyways? That's just a crazy amount of them.

Digging at the factory where they were made.

[fyrffytr1]

How long will it take you to clean and sort them?

[cheese]

How long will it take you to clean and sort them?

Maybe years. I have only cleaned a few scoops so far. It's just something I can do on rainy days and evenings once in a while.

[Bharpring]

Wow, I can’t even imagine what I would do with all of those marbles. Are all of these collectible and valuable? Or are they the rejects?

[cheese]

Most are mint, just dumped because they are excess over an order or maybe 10% had issues so they dumped the whole run (not worth the time picking out the bad ones) or who knows. Sometimes the marble machine would run just to get the rest of a color out of the tank. It was a tank the size of a pickup truck with molten glass in it, it couldn't be turned off at the end of the day and fired up again the next, it would take hours to get back to temp. It ran steady, and if for whatever reason they didn't have a place for the marbles to go or the order was full and glass was still in the tank, they ran it and dumped them. Marbles were even used for fill in WV.

[yakker]

Holy mother of ....... You are a lucky guy! Is the area a place you have to know someone to dig-- get permission from someone? Or a company? Or is it on someone's private property now? (well, obviously, but...) I guess what I'm really asking is how one would get permission to go there and poke around? I'm dying here! Way too cool!
(I lurk more often than not these days, but will check back to see progress and more pics) Thanks for the show!

[cheese]

I just got home from one more dig. The owner opened up a large vein of marbles underground and thought we should save them before they got buried forever. The property is private and the owners have cameras out and are having problems with looters, but not now. Fill dirt is being hauled over the site and the marbles will be under 10 feet of dirt and concrete. When we finished the last dig, they were already starting to cover it with fill dirt. Digging there is over now.

[yakker]

Dang. That's a sad thing. But one day, you know someone's going to be looking around that area- maybe 100 years from now, and wonder at the amazing treasures found 10 feet under the broken-up concrete! Maybe you could add a few more picks of what you rescued-- for all of us who will never have the opportunity.

[cheese]

Here are just a few

[cheese]

[Bharpring]

Wow, Cheese. That is so awesome. You were able to save so many. This had to be like a dream for you. Are all of these marbles going in your museum? I need to make a visit some day soon. Not too far for me.

[cheese]

It was a bucket list type thing. We also named several of the new types. Right now most of them are still dirty. I wish I had a museum but it all stays put away in storage except for when I'm looking at it. Eventually I hope to have it where I can display it.