Archive | Ebay

I came across this purported fix (pdf in case the listing is gone) for faulty vintage Revere Ware pressure cooker over pressure plugs on Ebay.

The problem with over pressure plugs on the vintage cookers is (a) they contain solder inside that will melt (thus opening up the over pressure hole) when the pressure gets too high, and once blown, they are useless, and (b) they are no longer available.

While they do include a copy of the pressure cooker manual (which you can download from our site for free), the fix itself is nothing more than a screw and nut that will permanently block off the over pressure hole.

While it may be frustrating not being able to use your pressure cooker without an over pressure plug, plugging the hole and leaving yourself with no over pressure release is dangerous.  The instructions that came with the “fix” give no warning as to the dangers of not having a pressure relief when using a pressure cooker.

We can’t recommend fixing your pressure cooker in this way.

Ebay now appears to do some classification of its own, although it is far from complete.  This page separates out some Revere Ware listings into categories.  The amount of categories is far from complete and this only appears to cover a small number of the available Revere Ware related auctions.

Revere Ware (aka World Kitchen) sells very few lids anymore for their copper bottom style cookware.  Our latest check shows two lids, a 10″ and one listed as fitting 2 and 3 quart saucepans.  For owners of vintage cookware, specifying lids by capacity means little as the sizes varied over the years for a given capacity.

By far the best places to get replacement lids for your copper bottom cookware are your local thrift store, where you can often find a large selection of lids, or Ebay, if you want to find a very specific size.  As of this writing, Ebay lists about 100 lids at auction.

We’ve created a site, revereware.org that sorts all Revere Ware listings on Ebay sorted by type and size, and you can find all the lids here.

To find the right lid for your cookware, choose a size that is listed with measurements the same size or slightly smaller than the inside diameter of your cookware. Revere Ware lids are usually just slightly smaller than the cookware they fit. Ebay listers will show this as anywhere from 1/16″ to 1/4 inch smaller than your cookware diameter.

Very few Revere Ware pots in our experience have a diameter that is NOT a whole inch; exceptions we have found include a 6 1/4″ skillet (that takes a 6″ lid) and 5 1/2″ saucepans. However, based on auction listing we’ve seen, there do appear to be 6.5″ and 7.5″ sizes as well.

For example, lids listed measuring 5.25 (5 1/4), 5.3125 (5 5/16), 5.375 (5 3/8), 5.4375 (5 7/16), and 5.5 (5 1/2) inches are all probably the same size measured slightly differently by different sellers and should all fit a sauce pot with a 5.5″ inside diameter.

It is hard to be a Revere Ware fan and miss Ebay as probably the best place to get good quality vintage Revere Ware cookware these days to fill-out one’s collection or replaced a lost or damaged piece.  Some time ago we created a site to categorize all the listings for Revere Ware on Ebay (www.revereware.org).  The number of revere ware listings on Ebay continues to grow, as evidenced by our tracking of the number of pieces available over the last two years.

(We had a small bug that kept us from recording numbers above 1,000, which is why the top of the graph is flat.)

Ebay seems to have made some recent changes that make it easier to find Revere Ware (and probably many other) items. First, when searching on “revere ware” Ebay now includes results from “revereware” (i.e. no space) as well.  This is helpful as items are often listed in as one or the other but not both.  Second, Ebay searches for keywords like “revere ware” now show up in Google results.