I’m somewhat surprised to see the Revere Ware name being used to catch peoples interest on Google searches. For example:
Of course, if you click through, there are no actual Revere Ware products for sale, they are just trying to get people to come look at what they do have for sale.
The brand is dead but the name lives on.
The popularity of Revere Ware in the 1940’s undoubtedly motivated some copycats. One of these which was recently brought to our attention by reader Jim is Thermic-Ray cookware. Jim writes:
I found a few pans in a local thrift store made by Norris Stamping and Manufacturing Co., of Los Angeles CA under the trade name of “Thermic-Ray”. Same basic design as Revere Ware, but the handles don’t seem as well made. They were produced for a few years after the War.Norris Stamping and Manufacturing Co., maker of Thermic-Ray, had come through WW2 as the largest manufacturer of all-steel bomb and artillery shell casings. I’m sure they were searching for peacetime business, hence this cookware. But by 1951, Norris dropped Thermic-Ray, renaming it Norrisware.I believe at some point they gave up on copper bottoms, and went with all stainless steel designs. In 1967, Norris eventually sold the line to Regal Ware.
| Revere ware | Thermic-Ray | ||
| 4 quart Dutch oven | 54.1 oz | 46.2 oz | -15% |
| 7 inch sauce pan | 26.2 oz | 29.5 oz | 13% |
As you can see, from a weight perspective, the Revere Ware Dutch oven is 15% heavier than the Thermic-Ray, but the Thermic-Ray sauce pan is 13% heavier than the Revere Ware one. I’d call them pretty comparable overall. The Thermic-Ray copper bottom does feel solid and substantial, unlike Revere Ware copper bottoms after 1968.
Price-wise, a 6 quart Dutch Revere Ware Dutch oven was selling for $11.25 in 1949 while a similar Thermic-Ray one was selling for $9.50. I think in the anals of history, it seems likely that Revere Ware was too much of a household name at that time for a brand like Thermic-Ray to beat, if they didn’t get significant traction even selling at a 15% discount.
People always seem to be looking for lids for the Revere Ware mixing bowls, so it is somewhat rare to find a set with lids on eBay, and for such a good low price.
I’ve reported a number of times on the issues in recent years with the aggressive moves by states to grab income tax from out-of-state sellers (one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine). I’m surely not the only small business to get the jitters from all this; I recently came across a blog post on this topic from a small seller of retro electronic that I follow that highlights an additional issues along these lines; not only our states, but countries are creating more aggressive regulations, making it harder for small businesses to compete on an international scale.
In summary / TL;DR:
GDPR is responsible for all the “cookie warnings” that almost every website has now. Like shady attorneys pursuing website accessibility lawsuits in the US, there are a litany of such attorneys pursuing GDPR lawsuits against companies in the EU. This has created extra hassles (and costs) for small businesses and extra hassles for end users.
LUCID requires companies to declare their annual weight of shipped packages and then purchase a packaging license from a third party; it appears to be mostly enforced by Germany, but applies to the entire EU.
VAT tax collection by EU and Canada (we haven’t seen that yet) is causing shipment delays and extra hassle for customers.
The bottom line is that the regulatory burden that negatively affects small businesses is getting worse, not better. I’ve always thought that people in the public sector making these laws are lacking in practical business experience, which leads to laws that hurt rather than help our nations small businesses.
I think our leaders need to remember that small businesses (fewer than 500 employees) employ over 60 million people in the US. They would be wise to consider how new laws and regulations affect small businesses before implementing them.
I’m not familiar with the Patio Ware line, but this great mailer from 1955 I recently found with a trove of other historical Revere items on eBay sheds some light on it.
The 14 cup percolator is the only piece from this collection I am familiar with (and I have one). Apparently they were also advertised as being made for “a man’s larger hands.” 🙂
A search on eBay shows that this must not have been a long-lived line, as there aren’t many of them for sale – only 7 listings out of around 14,000 Revere Ware items on eBay at the moment. But whoo-boy, they sure do seem to sell at a premium.
Reader Emily sent us an electronic copy of a very early 1939 catalog.
This is the earliest catalog I’ve ever seen and shows the Revere Ware collection as it was first introduced. The sauce pan and skillet handles are the style with the two screws close to the front of the handle.
We get a lot of requests for help from people that buy from us and people that don’t; we are happy to do what we can for everyone. Here are some highlights from the week or answering people’s questions.
Mildred was curious on how to restore the shine on the outside of her tea kettle.
Thank you. Very helpful. Bar Keeper’s Friend brought
the sheen back!—–Original Message—–
From: RevereWareParts Customer ServiceHi Mildred,
See our care guide; there is information there specifically about cleaning the outside of the kettle.
https://www.reverewareparts.com/information-product-manuals/care-and-cleaning/
Peter
Jeff had a lid with a broken off screw.
You folks are awesome, thanks so much.
From: RevereWareParts Customer Service
Hi Jeff,
See our page on this repair:
https://www.reverewareparts.com/information-product-manuals/knob-repair/
On that page you’ll find the specifications for the screw you need. We don’t sell them; you’ll have to
procure one from your local hardware store.Peter
Andrea was inquiring about the Revere Tapster.
Thank you for the information!
From: RevereWareParts Customer Service
Hi Andrea,
This is the only information I currently have on our website about the Tapster:
https://www.reverewareparts.com/how-to-make-beer-elegant/
Peter
Eileen needed a new lid.
Thank you so much. I will look into that.
Eileen
RevereWareParts Customer Service wrote:
Hi Eileen,
Since Revere Ware stopped being produced in 2018 by the latest owners Corelle Inc,
new lids are no longer available. But there is a very robust market for used lids on eBay.
You can find a nice frequently updated and sorted list of Revere Ware lids available there
by size here:https://www.revereware.org/lid.html
Peter
We’ll try to answer any question you have.
TL:DR
We can’t add things to an order as we don’t store payment information and order cancellation isn’t always possible.
The Whole Story
A few times a month people request changes to orders placed through our website, such as adding an additional item, canceling and order, or changing the quantity of an item. For a couple of reasons, order changes are not simple, and are not always possible.
For starters, we use a fulfillment contractor to ship our orders. The orders placed on our website are then transmitted to our fulfillment contractors system and an order is created in their system. Sometimes, an order is fulfilled quickly after it is placed and is added to a bin of outgoing orders. When this happens, it is nearly impossible for them to dig through a large collection of packages and pull out a single one.
And sometimes it is just bad timing. You place an order and 10 minutes later request cancellation. We check our customer service email two hours later but the order has already shipped. 🙁
So when someone requests a cancellation, we do contact our fulfillment contractor and request cancellation, but about 20% of the time, the order is already in the outgoing shipping bin, or has shipped, and cancellation isn’t possible.
This also applies to requests to reduce the quantity of something in an order, for instance when you accidentally order two of something not realizing it was already in the cart; we’ll happily do that if we can, but it isn’t always possible.
Second, we chose long ago not to store payment information to reduce the exposure of that information being stolen should our website be hacked. When you order from us, we simply pass your credit card information on to our merchant processor and never store it. But that means if you ask us to add an item to your order (to combine shipping), we can’t, because we have no way of charging you for it.
When someone wants to add items to an order, we typically just cancel the original order (see above for limits on this) and ask the customer to place a new order for everything they wanted.
This post serves to show that if you look, you may eventually find the replacement part you need.
If you have a 3-quart Revere Ware tea kettle, our cap is said to work by some customers, and you can have a trigger we designed 3D printed, but you are out of luck if you need a new handle.
Except today, as there are not one but two replacement handles for sale on eBay.
Well, here we are in the 5th month of the pandemic. Since April, we’ve seen a boost to sales as people spend more time (a lot more time) at home cooking, and are likely wanting their cookware to be in tip top shape.
May was our best month ever, in 11 years, and was 2 1/2 times our normal May volume.
June slowed down somewhat, but was still 1 1/2 times our normal June.
But July picked up significantly again and was about equal to our busiest month of the year, January, and was almost double our typical July.
The sad news is, the trend in July is probably happening because the coronavirus is again running rampant, worse than it ever has, and people are once again hunkering down and spending less time going out, and more time cooking in.
In this sense I guess we are just one more dashboard into how the country is feeling about the coronavirus.
