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Archive | July, 2018

eBay finds of the week

Glancing through my saved search results from eBay this week, I’ve come across some great finds.

The first is expensive, but rare; a brand new vintage 4 quart stock pot.

Next, we have a new, and incredibly cheap, drip coffee maker.  I just love these.

Finally, the sought after square skillet, for a very chip starting bid.

Personally, I’ve waited years sometimes to find the right item at the right price on eBay.  Simply setting some saved searches and keeping up with the results will often help you find the hard-to-find piece, or a more common piece at a good price.

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When your Revere Ware lid has a stub, not a screw

We’ve written about this before, but as it is the most common question we receive, it is worth mentioning again.

Over the years, Revere Ware had many different types of lid knob screw inserts (the part that provides the threads inside the lid knob).  We’ve seen brass, aluminum, stainless steel, and threads directly in the Bakelite (the worst, as they strip easily).  It is fairly common for the screw insert to rust to the screw on the lid.  Rust is common whenever you have dissimilar metals touching each other.  Customer Evelyn send us some great pictures of her lid that has this problem.

It makes it look like it requires a press-on knob, not a screw on one.

Evelyn soaked it with oil overnight, and then used a pair of pliers to unscrew it the next day.  It came off and she was able to use the replacement knob she ordered from us.

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Orange Bakelite

I still don’t understand the reasons Revere Ware made some colored Bakelite parts, but we do come across them from time to time.  Occasionally, they sell for ridiculous amounts on eBay.

Lynda sent us these pictures of her sauce pan with orange Bakelite parts.

So far, we’ve seen yellow, white, blue, and orange colored Bakelite.  And of course, black. 🙂

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World Kitchen is now Corelle Brands … possibly dumping the Revere product line

If you haven’t heard of World Kitchen, LLC, it is the company that has held the iconic brands like Pyrex, Corning, and, or course, Revere Ware, for decades now.  They have largely subsisted by offering cheaper, in quality if not price, cookware under those and other brands, living off the decades of previous brand equity.

Last year, they were acquired by a private equity group, Cornell Capital.  Now, the company is changing its name to Corelle Brands.  Corelle is a dishware brand first introduced by Corning in the 1970’s.

We heard a rumor, which we are still trying to confirm, that the company may be looking to discontinue the Revere brand.  They do seem to be removing it from the official short list of their brands.  Here is a snippet from their corporate information page on the products site:

Headquartered in Rosemont, IL, Corelle Brands and its affiliates manufacture and market glass, glass ceramic and metal cookware, bakeware, tabletop products and cutlery sold under well-known brands including CorningWare, Pyrex, Corelle, Chicago Cutlery, Snapware and OLFA.

No mention of Revere, but further down on the page, it is still part of their “family”:

However, on the Revere product home page, it is not included in the family, replaced by Corelle, their new namesake.

It gets worse.  on their corporate site, again no mention of the Revere brand as part of their portfolio.

Perhaps this is just an artifact of an ineffective PR team, of which there are other indications.  Take a look at the corporate news:

Does this one strike anyone as ill advised?

When clicking on it:

Whoops.

While you can still find new copper bottom Revere Ware cookware through some channels, it s getting harder and harder to find.  Corelle seems to have bet the brand on the new Copper Confidence Core product they introduced almost two years ago.  Perhaps sales are not going well.

 

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Good and Bad Revere Ware

Customer Chris emailed us recently with a question about the bottom of his Revere Ware pan

I just bought a few Revere skillets from a garage sale and the big one has a black coating on the bottom of the pan that is  peeling off. Should I try and get all of the black coating off or is there a way to keep it from peeling? What should I do? Thank you for your help!

Here is what the bottom looks like:

That definitely appears to be a newer style pan (post 1968, and from what I see happening to the bottom, probably much newer).  It appears to me that there is a layer of burnt carbon over the copper on the bottom.  The copper layer appears to be peeling off of the stainless core of the pan.
It used to be that Revere Ware made pans that had about equal amounts of copper and stainless on the bottom, and the pan was rather thick.  Post 1968, to save money,
they made the layers of both small.
Since that time, the quality has gotten really bad.  Some of the years they appear to have made the copper layer so thin that it just exists to make the pan look like the old style, but the copper layer wasn’t thick enough to actually do anything (like spread the heat).  This appears to be one of those pans.  It is not uncommon for the copper layer to peel off for pans made like that, meaning, we’ve heard lots of stories of this happening.
The post-1968 Revere Ware is pretty hit and miss.  Some of it, while not as good as spreading the heat as the older vintage variety, still works fine as a stainless steel pan, and may never have problems like those above.  But, if you are looking to replace a piece, or start a collection, you are much better off searching for the vintage era cookware that has the process patent stamp on the bottom, like this:
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