Bex Scott is back for a new season of Pyrex with Bex and in this first episode of the season, she’s diving into the rabbit hole of collectible salt and pepper shakers. Her own collection started when she found lots of them in an online estate sale and discovered that her favorites are the kitschy anthropomorphic shakers. Why were so many made? When were they popular and why? Which ones are most valuable now? Bex reveals what she learned in this episode.
Salt and pepper shakers were easy to collect because of their size, small, and they were also very affordable. They date back to around 1858 though there is some dispute over the exact person who created them. Strangely, the kitschy eye-catching salt and pepper shakers were one of the few things whose sales didn’t dip during the Great Depression. Because they were small and cheap, they were easy to continue producing and still affordable to collect or gift. Bex explores how salt and pepper shaker designs reflected the time periods they were created in, the themes that became most popular, the rarest and most valuable salt and pepper shakers to look for now, and a family who collected 80,000 sets and started a museum just to house them. You don’t want to miss this episode. It will make you look twice at salt and pepper shakers when you come across them.
Bex Scott: [00:00:02] Hey everybody, it's Bex Scott and welcome to the Pyrex with Bex podcast, where, you guessed it, I talk about vintage Pyrex, but also all things vintage housewares. I'll take you on my latest thrifting adventures, talk about reselling, chat with other enthusiasts about their collections, and learn about a bunch of really awesome items from the past. Subscribe now on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you love listening to podcasts so you don't miss a beat. Hey, everybody, this is Bex Scott and you are listening to the Pyrex with Bex podcast. And on today's episode it's salt and pepper time. We are talking all about salt and pepper shakers. And for me, this is a super fun topic because I have been collecting salt and pepper shakers on and off for the last couple of years. I don't have a huge collection, but they are one of the easiest things I've found to collect and to unfortunately amass in large quantities.
Bex Scott: [00:01:04] So my salt and pepper shaker collection started back when I found a bunch of huge lots of them in an online estate sale, and I didn't actually know how many I was buying until I picked them up. And I probably had three moving boxes full of them, and unpacking them and cataloging them and photographing them was a massive endeavor. But one of the most fun things you can do as a collector, as you guys probably know, is unboxing and seeing what's inside, what you've bought from a sale or an online auction, and finding the little nuggets of maybe a really collectible item or something that you really love.
Bex Scott: [00:01:53] So most of these salt and pepper shakers that I did buy, I ended up selling online on Facebook Marketplace or on Poshmark and some of them even on Whatnot now. And I've had a few friends on Whatnot who have had full on salt and pepper shaker sales, and it's so fun to watch them go through each of the shakers and to see just how fun they were. My favorite ones, hands down, are the kitschy salt and pepper shakers, and my great grandma had an absolute love of Lefton Bluebird, so I've been lucky enough to inherit some of her bluebirds. I have the salt and pepper shakers. I also have some of the more kitschy anthropomorphic ones. I have little kittens that are sitting on balls of yarn. I have some skunks that are sitting on logs and they're just very fun, cute, and you can store a lot of them in a small place. So this led me down a hole of looking into salt and pepper shakers, their appeal, their history. And I actually learned quite a bit about them.
Bex Scott: [00:03:07] So. Salt and pepper shakers were easy for people to collect because of their size, and they were so affordable and they were just really easy to come across as well. They held on to them or passed them down. And you could, before, get a figural set of a dog, a cat, a bird for 5 to $7. Now the prices have gone up a little bit because they are in higher demand. People are reselling them and there are more that are collectible, some more than others. Salt and pepper shakers, they go back to about 1858 and they were created, some believe, by a man named John Mason who also created the Mason jar. So some people kind of refute this and are questioning whether that's actually true. But this is what I've found so far in my research. And before the salt and pepper shaker came to be, people used a bowl of salt called a salt cellar. And I've come across a lot of salt cellars in my collecting days, and a lot of the really cute ones are the little hens on the nest. I didn't actually know the purpose of a salt cellar. I knew that it was called that and you scooped the salt up with a spoon. People often added rice to it to keep the moisture at bay. And then it wasn't until 1911, when the brand Morton Salt Company introduced magnesium carbonate into salt that helped it to not clump, which is why people don't often put rice into their salt shakers now.
Bex Scott: [00:05:02] So with these cute little kitschy and fun sets on home and restaurant tables, there was a high demand for the aesthetically appealing styles, and it was important for homemakers to have these on their table to show them off and to just have fun collecting them. So many people purchased them on road trips back in the day. One of the most popular types of salt and pepper shakers was the souvenir shaker that you got on your road trip that may have said the location it was from and where you got it. Now the Great Depression came along and there was no dip in salt shaker sales because it was one of the cheapest items in the kitchen. And during the 1930s and into the 1940s, the salt shakers went from glass and tin containers to the ceramic or plastic figurines. Most were from occupied Japan after a halt in production during the war. And the kitschier the better. So salt and pepper shakers became more cute, more eye-catching, and the number of salt and pepper shakers sold at local five and dimes and the fancier stores was just increasing. So some of the fun ones that you could find were the anthropomorphic fruit, fish, dogs. There's a set called the Extra Long Daschund that is really cute if you want to look up these funny little skinny wiener dog salt and pepper shakers.
Bex Scott: [00:06:45] So by the 1970s, these cute figural shakers had completely gone out of style, out of production, and they were replaced by what we now have, which is a more standard boring cylindrical-style salt and pepper shaker. Don't get me wrong, there's some beautiful salt and pepper shakers out there now still, but it's just not the same anymore. And some of the ones that they were replaced by that people still collect are the Tupperware salt and pepper shakers, which were really popular during that time and not so much the conversation starters of all the cute, anthropomorphic, kitschy ones that you used to be able to find. So by the 1990s, people started to realize that the salt and pepper shakers were worth something because of the demand that collectors had made for them. And some of the most popular ones are cute little ones hanging from trees that have little baskets. I just sold a set. It was an adorable little dog that had two hanging baskets on the left and the right that you could remove, and those were the salt and pepper shakers. And the baskets were filled with flowers. Lots of kissing and hugging shakers. I have two little bears that when you put them together, their arms wrap around each other. Lots of Christmas ones. And some of the most sought after are from Lefton, Napco, Holt Howard.
Bex Scott: [00:08:18] So a lot of this information that I found from my friend Worthpoint, and in this article that I was reading they went through the most collectible shakers from Lefton, Napco and Holt Howard, which I thought was super interesting because as a collector, I'm always wondering which ones I should be on the lookout for. So if you want to start the hunt, Lefton's most collectible are Bluebirds, Christmas angels, Miss Dainty, which is the girl with the red and white hat, Mr.Tootles the Maltese dog, Miss Priss the Blue Kitten, Thumbelina, The Green Fairy, Kissing Santa and Mrs. Claus, Christmas birds which are green, the Puppy Pal dogs wearing blue hats, and pink poodle chef, which in brackets they say is beyond expensive. I've actually never seen the pink poodle chef.
Bex Scott: [00:09:21] Napco, you have number one, Miss Cutie Pie, two anthropomorphic fruit people, so that would be the artists, musicians, kissing Valentine birds, the bowler and hard hats, devils, flower girls, and long neck animals. And then Holt Howard, you have the Nodder Rock and Roll on springs, merry mice,they are pink and mischievous, Holly Poinsettia girls, winking Santa, Daisydorables, rooster, and pixieware are the most desirable of all the Holt Howard shakers I've seen. Not in person, but on a lot of my favorite collectors Instagrams and some on Facebook Marketplace. The pixieware salt and pepper shakers. They are so cute! Next up we have Enesco. Number one is the Sweet Shop. It says very pricey and rare. Anything anthropomorphic, fruits, vegetables, forks and spoons. I have had some forks and spoons. They're very cute. You can't really hold a lot of salt and pepper in them though, so definitely more for display. Golden Girls, Country Kids, Snappy the Snails, Missy Mouse, Doctor WO Owl, and Jonah and the whale.
Bex Scott: [00:10:37] So going into more of the research, I discovered as well that people have local chapters of salt and Pepper shaker clubs. I didn't know that, but it makes sense. There are clubs for Pyrex collectors, Facebook groups and pages, many of which I'm a part of. So it would make sense that these salt and pepper shaker lovers would come together and sell and swap stories about their salt and pepper shakers. So after digging into some of this research about salt and pepper shakers and finding out that there was a salt and pepper shaker museum, I looked into this article by the Smithsonian magazine by Derek Workman, and it goes over this family's 80,000 shakers worth of salt and pepper shakers. So they have 40,000 pairs of shakers. They are called the Ludden family. And they have enough shakers to fill two museums. So it's Andrea, her son Alex, and her daughter, and they are in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, with all of their salt and pepper shakers. So andrea said she started completely by chance when she bought a pepper mill at a garage sale in the mid 1980s. I'm sure that most of the collectors out there listening can totally relate to this. You find one item at a garage sale and it takes you down a spiral of collecting. I know that that's how things usually start for me with my addictive collecting personality. That's how my Pyrex started with finding it in my grandparents garage. So Andrea says that she had this pepper mill. It didn't work, so she bought a couple more, and she used to stand them on the window ledge of her kitchen, and her neighbors thought she was building a collection.
Bex Scott: [00:12:32] She said nothing could have been further from her mind, but her neighbors started to bring new ones over, and eventually she had 14,000 on shelves all over her house, even in her bedrooms. And her husband Rolf told her that she needed somewhere else to put these or they're going to get divorced. So that's when they decided to create this museum. So you can wander around the museum. It says there's fat chefs, ruby red tomatoes, guardsmen in bearskins, Santas, feet sticking from a chimney, pistols and potatoes, a copy of the salt and pepper shaker cufflinks worn by Lady Diana. That is very cool. And Andrea, she was or is an archeologist by training, and when she moved to the States, she couldn't find work in her field. So she turned her attention to social anthropology, and she studied everyday life since the early years through her growing collection of salt and pepper shakers. And she says here in the article, "there's almost nothing you can imagine that hasn't been copied as a salt and pepper shaker. And many of them reflect the designs, the colors and the preoccupations of the period", which is very true. And when you think about it, when you look at a salt and pepper shaker you don't really think that deeply about it, but a lot of these designs were reflections of what was going on in the time.
Bex Scott: [00:13:58] So they go into how, in the article, it was because people could travel more freely, either for work or on vacation, that the souvenir industry came about. And salt and pepper shakers were cheap, easy to carry, and colorful, and they made ideal gifts. So among the earliest producers of salt and pepper shakers were the German fine pottery maker Goebel. They introduced its first three sets in 1925, and today its Hummel shakers, introduced in 1935, are highly collectible. And ironically, it was the Great Depression of the 1930s that gave a major boost to the popularity of salt and pepper shakers as a household item and a collectible item, and ceramic producers worldwide were forced to restrict production and concentrate on lower priced items, and this helped because salt and pepper shakers were small, easy to produce, bright and cheery, and really could be bought for a few cents at most local hardware stores. Soon other ceramic companies got into the act, and Japanese firms had a large share of the market from the late 1920s through the 1930s. As well, from the late 1940s through the 50s, and production halted during World War Two. So the shakers they produced in postwar years labeled 'made in occupied Japan' or simply 'occupied Japan' are extremely rare and highly sought after. In the 1950s and 60s, they began producing shakers made from plastic. Plastic was very fragile, so fewer of these examples exist, making them extremely valuable. Which is another good thing to know because I have seen a lot of the plastic shakers around.
Bex Scott: [00:15:49] Sometimes they're not in the greatest shape, but knowing this, that they are more rare and collectible, definitely makes that a bit exciting for me to try and find the plastic ones over some of the other ceramic ones that you can find. So they go into how, at first glance, the museum seems bright and happy, if a bit haphazard. The displays are well thought out and organized, especially considered the many models on display. I can't even begin to imagine how hard it would be to categorize and organize that many salt and pepper shakers. And because you can work by style, age, subject matter, color, Andrea says they try to do it in a way that combines all of the elements at the same time. There are hundreds of themes, and in those themes there will be many colors. But her mom has a way of laying out displays that are highly planned so that the colors within a theme are displayed together. For example, she continues, all the greens, yellows and reds of the vegetables are arranged in vertical rows. You get bright color bands, but all the shakers are on the same theme. It's a lot more complicated than it sounds because there are so many. A large number of the shaker sets are humorous. There's an aspirin salt shaker, a martini glass pepper shaker, and when they're all set up, there's sometimes an opportunity to create a visual joke. Andrea says that you see what looks like models of the southwest US Adobe houses of the style found in New Mexico with cactus and cowboys and Indians but behind them are two UFOs that have crashed and two aliens that glow in the dark.
Bex Scott: [00:17:33] It's amazing how many of these shakers tell a tale that isn't obvious to everyone. One of her favorites is a chef holding a cat in one hand and a cleaver in the other. I always thought it was just a fun item, says Andrea, but her mom explained that it was very significant to older people who had been through the Depression and major wars. Food was short, but you still had to eat, so if a cat strayed by, it went into the pot and came out as chicken surprise! Oh my. As they continue the tour, they're absorbed by all the weird and wonderful shakers. Coca Cola cans, Dolly Parton's photo on a souvenir from Dollywood, the Smokies most fun place, Mickey and Minnie in chef tucks and aprons, the Beatles with the cropped hair and collarless jacket of the early days, a turquoise TV with Lucie Arnaz and her neighbor Ethel Mertz on the screen, and a sofa with an I Love Lucy heart shaped cushion, alligators with sunshades from Florida, bullfighters and bulls from Spain, kangaroos from Australia, a bobby and double decker bus from London, before and after versions of Mount Saint Helens made from the actual volcanic ash. Very cool. There are also familiar ones, shakers your grandmother used to have, or you saw when you went on vacation somewhere, or you gave as a gift once.
Bex Scott: [00:18:48] "People come back over and over again and think that we are adding to the displays," says Andrea, "but we aren't. It's just that they didn't see them the first time around." The museum doesn't display all the shakers it owns, but it does exhibit a few Aunt Jemima and Uncle Tom shakers, the cook and butler stereotypical characters from the 1950s, knowing some people might be offended by the negative portrayal of African Americans. They are part of the history of salt and pepper shakers. We display them, but we do it discreetly, she says. You can't change history by simply pretending it didn't happen or ignore it. So that article, if you want to read more in-depth, Smithsonian Magazine, 'Would You Like Some Salt and Pepper? How About 80,000 Shakers Worth?' by Derek Workman. And diving into the world of salt and pepper shakers has definitely been a fun one. I would love to know your favorite salt and pepper shakers, how many you might have in your collection, where you find most of them. It is a super fun topic, and if you do want to find salt and pepper shakers out there, I would highly suggest looking at Facebook Marketplace. A lot of the Canadian sellers that I know, including myself, we sell them on Whatnot, so find us there and also on eBay.
Bex Scott: [00:20:11] They can get a little bit pricey, but I really find that the thrill is in the hunt. So check out garage sales. Even ask your family members. I'm sure your grandparents, your parents might even have some stuffed in their china cabinets that they're not using. It's just fun to see how many were produced, how many different kinds are out there, and just to see the evolution of them over time. And if you are buying them to resell them, it is really important to look for damage on them. They, I've found, are one of the easiest things to chip and to break, even the smallest little bump. They chip quite easily, especially if you have, like the little Lefton bird shakers, looking on the ears of animals and the beaks. And just anywhere where there's a corner that they may have been hit against something, just keep an eye out. But if it's for your own personal collection, then it's a lot easier just to pick them up in any condition that they are. So I'd love to connect. You can find me on Instagram @PyrexWithBex. You can find me on Whatnot. Selling weekly on Fridays at usually around 2 p.m. Mountain Standard, and my username on Whatnot is Pyrex with Bex. I sell a variety of vintage items, including Pyrex, of course, but a lot of smaller items and jewelry as well. So I hope you enjoyed this episode of salt and pepper shakers. And when you're sitting down at dinner tonight, you might think of the shakers on your table in a different light.
"Whatnot" with Kim, the Red Rooster
Saison 1 · Épisode 15
vendredi 12 avril 2024 • Durée 01:08:32
Bex Scott welcomes guest Kim, owner of The Red Rooster Shoppe on Instagram and Whatnot, to the show to discuss everything to do with Whatnot. Kim, who has accumulated quite a following on Whatnot and is practiced at live shows, shares tips and advice on how to make Whatnot both fun and valuable. She also talks about all the vintage delights she collects and the many thrift stores she visits in Ontario.
Whatnot, according to Kim, is a social selling platform that combines entertainment and thrifting. It’s a buyers and seller social marketplace where live auction shows are commonplace. Kim and Bex talk about exactly why Whatnot has become so valuable to their vintage resale endeavours, not just as a sales platform but as a place to make like-minded friendships and support circles. Kim dishes about her childhood growing up with collector and reseller parents, her time as an auctioneer, the extensive vintage collection she has amassed, and exactly how to get started on Whatnot and in vintage collecting in general. The conversation is fun, full of laughter and tips, and a great way to get a feel for Whatnot as a platform.
Host Bex Scott shares delightful Pyrex holiday recipes from the vintage 1953 cookbook, Pyrex Prize Recipes. A pie crust recipe straight from the book is also included, along with a variety of recipes and tips that Bex challenges listeners to try at home this holiday season.
Corning Glass Works published the Pyrex Prize Recipes book in 1953 and it only cost $2.50 when it was released. Times have certainly changed! But have the recipes? Bex first shares the different types of Pyrex dishes and what appliances they can be used on. She then divulges tips for taking care of and cleaning Pyrex, hoping to help everyone keep their Pyrex new-looking. Finally, the recipes. From hot chocolate to apple pie to mince pie, follow along with Bex and try these recipes at home over Christmas.
Bex Scott is ready for Christmas and talks about her favorite Christmas traditions, collecting vintage decorations, and the beautiful vintage Pyrex Christmas pieces she loves and is searching for. Bex shares cute throwback ad copy - with mind-blowing vintage pricing - and investigates rare Corning employee gift holiday designs worth seeking.
Some of Bex’s Christmas memories were made by watching her mom decorate their tree with vintage decorations passed down from her mother and grandmother. Holiday music and decor started in November when she was little, and it’s something she still enjoys. Now, though, Bex has the added pleasure of adding to her own vintage and Pyrex holiday piece collection. She describes the excitement of finding a Red 024 Holiday Casserole from 1960 in the wild and how she immediately snapped it up. Pyrex didn’t make a lot of holiday pieces but the ones they did make are rare, charming, and unique. Fellow enthusiasts and collectors will love exploring the festive vintage designs with Bex in this holiday episode.
Host Bex Scott welcomes her second guest to the show, Podcast Host and Pyrex collector Kelli Szurek. Kelli is an avid collector of all things Pyrex, along with other vintage glassware and figurines, and she discusses how she came to Pyrex love and what she is hunting for with Bex.
Kelli, like Bex, really fell into collecting Pyrex in the pandemic in 2020. The first Pyrex she bought was the Spring Blossom Cinderella set and as she says, “from there I was hooked”. Kelli tells Bex about some of the pieces she’s collected and where they came from, including some treasured items she received as gifts. Their conversation ranges from how hard it is to come across great treasures in flea markets and antique shops, their coveted holy grail Pyrex pieces, how Kelli anticipates Pyrex collecting to look in the future, and what sets are overrated or underrated. Lovers of Pyrex will truly identify with this episode and the absolute fascination with Pyrex and vintage collecting that hooked Kelli and Bex.
Bex Scott shares her garage sale adventures, as both a buyer and a seller, in this episode. Garage sales can offer up vintage treasures among all the worthless items, and visiting the sales can require a bit of a strong mindset for negotiating, as Bex learned, and can be intimidating at times. But she also describes how the fun is not just in finding the valuable pieces but in meeting the people around them.
Bex has fond memories of visiting garage sales with her mom growing up, so she tries to take her oldest son with her when she visits the sales now. Some of the garage sales she visited throughout the summer offered up beautiful vintage Christmas decorations and the hidden gems of Pyrex sold cheap because it wasn’t able to be cleaned (Bex knows better). Other sales visited offered only eccentric encounters with the people running the sales and a learning curve in bartering. Bex then recounts what she learned from hosting her own garage sale and encourages collectors to be prepared when visiting to enjoy the finds and strangeness alike.
Bex Scott: [00:00:02] Hey everybody, it's Bex Scott and welcome to the Pyrex with Bex podcast where, you guessed it, I talk about vintage Pyrex, but also all things vintage housewares. I'll take you on my latest thrifting adventures, talk about reselling, chat with other enthusiasts about their collections, and learn about a bunch of really awesome items from the past. Subscribe now on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you love listening to podcasts so you don't miss a beat.
The Mid-Century Maximalists
Saison 1 · Épisode 2
vendredi 10 novembre 2023 • Durée 42:20
Host Bex Scott welcomes guest Danielle of The Mid-Century Maximalists on Instagram to the show for Bex’s very first interview episode. Bex and Danielle talk about all things Pyrex, why Danielle started collecting, her amazing ceramics collection, and the joy of being a vintage collector in a modern world.
In a similar story to Bex’s, Danielle came to her love of vintage and Pyrex through her grandparents. She inherited several sets of Pyrex, including the Friendship and Butterprint patterns, and many of those pieces that hold sentimental value remain on display in Danielle’s house. She explains to Bex that many of her thrifted or purchased pieces, however, she uses on a daily basis. Danielle describes the eclectic maximalist decor she prefers, some of the many ceramics pieces her grandmother and great-grandmother handmade, and trades stories about favorite Pyrex and vintage items with Bex. This episode sheds light on why collectors love the hunt of collecting, the value of the pieces that goes beyond financial, and how to decorate with vintage finds.
Welcome to the inaugural episode of Pyrex With Bex with host Bex Scott. Bex talks about vintage Pyrex, of course, but also all things in vintage housewares. You’ll hear about her thrifting adventures, learn about reselling, and hear interviews with other enthusiasts. Today Bex introduces her “gateway Pyrex”, the item that inspired her passion for collecting.
Bex came to Pyrex because of her grandparents. In cleaning out their garage at the beginning of the pandemic, she discovered a box full of carefully wrapped dishes and glassware. Three of the items were a lime green lasagna pan and two mixing bowls, one green and one red. That discovery got her hooked and sent her into research and collecting. It was her “gateway Pyrex”. In this first episode she explains the significance of the pieces she found in the garage, what collections they belong to, and which book has become her “Pyrex Bible”. Bex also shares vintage ads and recipes that may just inspire you to get your own Pyrex bowl to try baking in. Avid Pyrex enthusiasts, vintage collectors, and interested newbies alike will thoroughly enjoy embarking on this Pyrex podcast journey with Bex.
Bex Scott: [00:00:02] Hey, everybody, it's Bex Scott and welcome to the Pyrex With Bex podcast where, you guessed it, I talk about vintage Pyrex, but also all things vintage housewares. I'll take you on my latest thrifting adventures, talk about reselling, chat with other enthusiasts about their collections, and learn about a bunch of really awesome items from the past. Subscribe now on Apple, Spotify or wherever you love listening to podcasts so you don't miss a beat.
Trailer: Pyrex With Bex
Saison 1
vendredi 2 juin 2023 • Durée 00:35
Discussion about vintage pyrex and other vintage home items as well as interviews with collectors to chat about their stories.
In today’s episode, Bex Scott uses her confessed addiction to thrifting to share the top six items that she always seeks out at thrift stores. Bex lives in Canada so the availability of items, and store names, may vary from country to country, but the general categories of vintage items Bex looks for are a great guide. She walks us through what to look for, why, and how to value an item if you do find one.
Bex’s list of items she frequents Value Village, Goodwill, and Salvation Army to find wouldn’t, of course, be complete without Pyrex occupying the number one spot. She tells stories of lining up before the store would open to be one of the first inside and she divulges some of the greatest Pyrex finds she’s experienced. Her six top sought-after items after Pyrex are brass, Blue Mountain pottery, cross stitch and crewel patterns, vintage linens, and kids' books. Why does she search for these specific items? Bex tells all in this episode: the why, their collectible value, and some of the pieces and brands to be on the lookout for. Tune in and then share your own top ten list with Bex on Instagram @PyrexWithBex.
Découvrez des podcasts liées à Pyrex With Bex. Explorez des podcasts avec des thèmes, sujets, et formats similaires. Ces similarités sont calculées grâce à des données tangibles, pas d'extrapolations !
Bex Scott: [00:00:02] Hey everybody, it's Bex Scott and welcome to the Pyrex with Bex podcast where, you guessed it, I talk about vintage Pyrex, but also all things vintage housewares. I'll take you on my latest thrifting adventures, talk about reselling, chat with other enthusiasts about their collections, and learn about a bunch of really awesome items from the past. Subscribe now on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you love listening to podcasts so you don't miss a beat. Hey, everybody, this is Bex Scott and you are listening to the Pyrex with Bex podcast. On today's episode, I'm going to be chatting with my reseller friend Kim, also known as the Red Rooster, all about Whatnot, what we love about the app, and how to get started on it as a new reseller.
Bex Scott: [00:00:49] Thanks for tuning into another episode of the Pyrex with Bex podcast. Today I have the pleasure of introducing you to Kim from the Red Rooster Shoppe. Welcome, Kim.
Kim: [00:01:00] Hello. How are you?
Bex Scott: [00:01:02] Good, thanks. How are you?
Kim: [00:01:03] I'm good. I'm good, very good.
Bex Scott: [00:01:06] So I met Kim through a fun little platform called Whatnot, and we'll get into Whatnot a bit later. But I wanted to start off with you telling us a little bit about you.
Kim: [00:01:17] So my name's Kim. I live in Hastings, Ontario, Canada, or just outside of Hastings, technically. I'm a full time dementia caregiver, but I used to be an auctioneer and my parents were big collectors and resellers. So when I was a kid, that's all we did as vacations was go to flea markets and meets, and weekends were spent in some gym, in some school somewhere in Ontario selling things. So it's just kind of what I'm used to, and I enjoy doing it now as kind of like a fun activity.
Bex Scott: [00:01:56] That is very cool. I didn't know that about you. Did you love doing that as a kid when you were growing up? Was that something that you really enjoyed doing or what were your feelings around that?
Kim: [00:02:07] I was an only child. I am an only child. So I don't think I knew anything different. Right? Just this was my normal. It was a little boring sometimes. But then mum would get me making crafts in the background, which of course we'd sell. You know, we had these pencils you could rub between your hands and they were your frustration releasers and they would go all funny hair. So I would sit there and--.
Bex Scott: [00:02:31] -- oh I remember those.
Kim: [00:02:32] Yeah, yeah, I forget what they were called, but, or the anger busters, I think we used to put labels on them sometimes is that. The only problem with them was because I used to take them to school with me, they were my fidget toy, but the eraser gets covered up by the hair and it's really hard to correct your mistakes. So you can't make any mistakes when you have that as your pencil. Yeah, but it was so normal that in grade seven I did speech arts, which I don't know if you did, but where everybody has to write a speech and then everybody goes in front of the classroom. It's probably too anxiety driven to be done anymore for kids.
Bex Scott: [00:03:12] Yeah. That was my worst. Fear.
Kim: [00:03:14] Yeah, it's it probably ended in like the late 80s, early 90s. But in the 70s and 80s, it was the thing you, every single kid had to do it. And I was good at it. I was, I was good. I could memorize and I could perform a little bit, but then I would get up on stage, and usually I would do a five minute speech in 2.5 minutes, because I would get really nervous and I would just go through it really, really fast, which took away from points. So I never went to like regionals or anything. Anyways, in grade seven, I wrote a speech. The first line of it is, have you ever gone to Pennsylvania for a screw? And it was so normal to me and I, and I was, I was like 13. I had no idea what a screw like that, what the connotation of that was until I was up on stage in front of the entire school. And the moment it came out of my mouth, like a millisecond later, I'm like, oh, I know what I just said, but I have to carry on. I have to carry on. But we would go like, we went every year to this swap meet for classic cars because my dad, who never finished building it, but he was building a 1928 model A coupe, which is kind of like a truck.
Bex Scott: [00:04:32] Very cool.
Kim: [00:04:33] But he never finished it because he wanted it to be 100% original, which meant every single part down to screws. Which is why we would go all the way to Pennsylvania, because that's every October at Hershey, Pennsylvania there's a meet for classic cars, antique car enthusiasts. And it's just, it's mud. It's an entire field of mud that you trudge through because it always rains, it always rains and there's so many people and everyone's pulling their wagon with their car parts in it, and I would have to trudge along in the mud holding on to a precious screw or something. But I just thought it was normal. So I wrote, in grade seven I asked the entire school if they'd ever gone to Pennsylvania for a screw.
Bex Scott: [00:05:25] I love it. That's very cute.
Kim: [00:05:27] It's a little embarrassing now.
Bex Scott: [00:05:30] Oh, so you had the childhood of flea markets and auctions and being an auctioneer. So how did the reselling side of what you do now begin?
Kim: [00:05:41] I had to close my business as an auctioneer. Auctioneering was actually like the last career I had before I got sick. I have what's called central sensitization syndrome. And so it's like fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue put together into one. So I was pretty much laid up in bed for a few years. And then the pandemic hit. And then my mother started to have the signs of moderate dementia. And so it got to the point where I had to move her in with me. So we moved here to near Hastings on the Trent River. And it's beautiful here and there's lots of activities for her to do. But I was looking for another outlet and mom and I always loved thrifting. It was our thing to do was to go thrifting. And I love that treasure hunt. But then you get the stuff home and it's like, oh, I don't really need this. And I had a huge, I had when I was sick and laid up at home, I had started trying to, like, ADHD really, because I never really completed anything, but I would get into a whole bunch of different crafts. So I had a whole like room full of craft supplies, and I was on Instagram and it wasn't even related to reselling, the woman that I was following.
Kim: [00:07:06] But she posted that her son and daughter-in-law were doing some, you know, Funko Pop sale on Whatnot. And I went, what's Whatnot? Like, I need to Google this. So I didn't use the referral code or anything, so I didn't get my little your bonus of using a referral code from a seller or another Whatnot or... But I looked into it and I was like, this sounds cool. This is fun. I think I want to do this. So first it was just to kind of get rid of my craft section, and then it was like, nah, you know what? I like these vintage decor people. The people who do vintage decor are fun. And I love these sellers and I love that community. So that's where I want to start, I started buying from there and then I was like, you know what? I think I want to, I want to sell in this category too. And next thing you know, I've got an entire basement full of stuff.
Bex Scott: [00:08:04] I understand that fully. Yeah, that's what my basement looks like as well.
Kim: [00:08:09] It's bad. It's really bad. But it's all inventory as far as I'm concerned. It's all inventory. So it's just a matter of when I manage to get time to sell it.
Bex Scott: [00:08:22] That's what I say every time I bring a new box home. Like this will be sold one day and it's going to make me a lot of money. So that's why I bought it. And then it's the slippery slope of the next box is the same thing.
Kim: [00:08:34] Yes. My husband just, he just shakes his head because he likes everything new, so he doesn't understand it. But he likes me being thrifty. He likes that. He likes that I can always find a way to save money somewhere. I will figure out a way.
Bex Scott: [00:08:52] That's perfect.
Kim: [00:08:52] He doesn't think that way. So he's always like, oh, good, like we don't have to buy a brand new fridge. We can go to the restore and get a fridge that's pretty much brand new because it came out of some remodeled house, you know, those sort of things. He likes that. But he doesn't like all the boxes right now. We call it the Great Wall of Hastings, because they're all lined up and built up into basically a wall that divides part of the basement. So.
Bex Scott: [00:09:24] That's awesome. I'd like to come and shop in your basement.
Kim: [00:09:27] Yeah. You'd have to unbox everything. I always say if someone was to come here and rob the place to try and get my treasures, first of all, it's all stuff that's going to take you a while to resell, so good luck with that. Second of all, there's a dog that will bite you. But third of all, you're going to have to go and like clean up first to find all the stuff and go through about 150 boxes. So guaranteed, I'll be home before you get through a third of it.
Bex Scott: [00:09:56] So really, it's a security system. That's a whole new way of looking at it.
Kim: [00:10:01] Yeah, it's it's a way of, you know, hiding your valuables in about 150 boxes. It's a little treasure hunt. It's like an Easter egg hunt for robbers. To figure out which box it is that's got the best stuff. Might be at the bottom. Might not be, I don't know. I don't know, actually, because I can't remember what's in everything. I never label the boxes, which I should probably do, but then it's always usually just whatever comes from the latest auction. And, you know, I accidentally fall into a thrift store on the way home from an auction pick up. That's not my fault. That the car just--
Bex Scott: [00:10:42] -- it just happened to be there.
Kim: [00:10:43] The car has a self-driving system that drives itself to different thrift stores on the way to the grocery store. Or like when I do my blood work, I make sure I do it in Trenton because the parking lot for the blood work place is the same parking lot as for the Missions Bible Thrift store. You know, so it's not my fault that after I get blood taken, I have to go into a thrift store to recover. That's the only way to recover from a loss of blood, really. Is to buy somebody.
Bex Scott: [00:11:20] It definitely helps.
Kim: [00:11:21] Yeah.
Bex Scott: [00:11:22] That's how I feel about Costco. I send my husband to Costco because Value Village is on the way to Costco, and he can drop me there and then go do the grocery shopping and then come and get me after he's done.
Kim: [00:11:35] I think what I'm going to start doing is bringing, once my husband's semi-retired, I'm going to get him to come with me thrifting, because then he'll get the 55 plus discount because I don't qualify yet. And I was thinking of becoming a student just so I could get the student discount because I buy so much, especially from the one place, Vinnies. I love them. But every time they always ask, they just automatically ask everybody do you qualify for a discount? Every time I'm like, no, not old enough yet. I wish I was old enough. It would save tons of money. I spend way too much there.
Bex Scott: [00:12:15] So from your perspective, I've tried to explain Whatnot to people before, and I'm not very good at it. So how would you explain Whatnot to somebody who's never heard of it?
Kim: [00:12:26] They call themselves a social selling platform, but basically it is entertainment plus thrifting put together. It's a way to get social and meet new people. There's friendships there, but it is... Whatnot is Whatnot. It's just, it's everything under the sun. They're even looking at the possibility of doing, in the next year or so, doing like vehicles and stuff, like.
Bex Scott: [00:12:56] Wow.
Kim: [00:12:57] Yeah. Which would obviously be local pickup not shipping. But they were talking about that in a product development show. So Whatnot is, it's like eBay but it's live. It's entertaining. There's still the auction part. But you can go in and you can just search for things at any time. But there's always a show on somewhere with something that you're probably going to like and want.
Bex Scott: [00:13:22] Mhm.
Kim: [00:13:23] And it's just fun. You can just come in and watch because there's, you know, there's goofs like me doing trivia and like I was just on the wigging-out train where we all were, there was 22 sellers, so that was like 11 hours solid of sellers who were wearing silly wigs and being silly for 11 solid hours. Yeah. It was pretty amazing. It's I mean, whatnot is just, it's entertainment, but it's also value because you can get some really good deals on Whatnot. And as a seller, it's just, it's a fun way to sell your stuff. I find it quick and easy and it's on my schedule, right? Like, I don't have to, if I can't do it because with mom having dementia, she's my priority, so if she's not having a good day or because she's not having a good day, I'm too tired to do a show because I don't want to be blah on a show. I want to be fun. I want to be myself. So I need to feel rested, so I can move it. I can move my shows when I need to.
Kim: [00:14:33] Consistency is important, but it's do as I say, not as I do. If you have the time, and, you know, one day when mum's not with us anymore, then I hope that Whatnot will be something that I do like, you know, 3, 4, or 5 times a week. That I'm doing short Whatnot shows or long Whatnot shows. And that's the other thing, you don't have to do one hour or, you know, three hours. You can do as much as you want or as little as you want, which I really like. So, it's so flexible for sellers and they are asking us to do more detailed listings. But if you do an unboxing. You can just lift it up and show it and turn it around and give some descriptions and mention any issues with it, and hit the button and start the auction and sell it like right there and then. So, which is great because I got a lot of boxes to unbox. So I love that part. But yeah, it's, I mean I think it's more, it's like it's entertainment and shopping all in one for just about anything you could think of.
Bex Scott: [00:15:40] Yeah, I think that's the perfect way to describe it. And I'm a very introverted person. I kind of keep to myself, and I've always been shy and starting off on Whatnot, having to - you don't necessarily have to show your face, you can flip it around and just show your product - but having to talk to yourself the whole time at the beginning was very challenging for me, but you kind of get into it and you start to have fun, and you have your regular followers and shoppers that come in to your shows all the time, and you start to build friendships and community. And I think four of the Canadian sellers, you've been a huge part of building that community and those friendships. And when I found all of you guys, it was kind of like a little built-in friend pod that you go along your daily life, but you guys are always there and you can ask questions and shop from each other's lives, and it's perfect.
Kim: [00:16:38] Yeah, I love the fact that there's like this group and it's, you know, mostly women in our category. So it's this really awesome, supportive group of women that are all Canadians who all love to buy and sell. And yeah, we're just so supportive of each other and just going into each other's stores. And there's been major things that have happened. Friday was my one year of selling on Whatnot anniversary, so--
Bex Scott: [00:17:07] Congratulations.
Kim: [00:17:08] It's only been one year and like three days. So, and it's not easy at first. You got to kind of get your own rhythm and groove and find the vibe that works for you. And that took some time for me to figure out because I didn't, I didn't really know, like I'm like an introverted extrovert, I guess. So like, I start off really shy and then I get stupid, or else I'm like extremely extroverted and I talk to every single person in the store, and then I just say, I don't get out much. That's my excuse. I don't get out much. But there's that Canadian group of women and we chat with each other offline, off of Whatnot, about our lives, and we're supportive of each other in our own lives and what's going on because, you know, as resellers there's so much else that goes on in our lives other than just listing product and selling it. And, you know, we've had we've had some pretty big tragedies that we've helped each other through and day-to-day sometimes if I just, if I have to rant, I have some place I can go and just put out a rant about how something that's not so great in my life that's happening.
Kim: [00:18:26] And it's just like, you're not alone. You realize you're just so not alone. But as resellers too, it's great because we can help each other. Like, do you know what this is? Have you seen it before? What is it someone sold it for, because Whatnot is one of many platforms that are available for resellers. It's the one that I'm using exclusively personally, but others aren't. And, so it's nice to be able to say, you know what? Maybe that should go somewhere else. Maybe that doesn't go on Whatnot. Maybe you want to put that on another platform and see if it sells there first, because you do get bargains on Whatnot. Whatnot's not always high end unless you're crazy lamp lady.
Bex Scott: [00:19:11] Yeah.
Kim: [00:19:12] That's a whole discussion. I have bought from her, I have to admit. I did go.
Bex Scott: [00:19:16] Her stuff is great.
Kim: [00:19:17] Her stuff is awesome. But at the same time there's stuff that she sells that it's like, yeah, I got that.
Bex Scott: [00:19:25] Yeah, yeah.
Kim: [00:19:26] I'm not going to get those prices. But that's okay, she can. She's built a following. She's worked hard to get that following.
Bex Scott: [00:19:32] Yeah. Especially when you have 530 people in a show. And sometimes I have like three.
Kim: [00:19:39] But you know what? All it takes is like one person who starts buying.
Bex Scott: [00:19:43] Yeah.
Kim: [00:19:44] Right? And especially if you do a loaded show, but someone says, hey, do you have any green glass and it's like, well, I don't have anything loaded, but here, walk over with me. You got, you can literally pick up your phone and just walk right over to wherever in your house or in your storage area you have whatever they're asking for. And you can just start loading it and selling it right on the spot to that person who wants it. It's great when there's competition, but you can also set your minimum price too, right? It's not like you have to do a low starting price. And that's what a lot of people do, is they set the minimum amount that they're willing to let the item go for, which I think is totally fair.
Bex Scott: [00:20:26] Yeah. I agree. It's an awesome platform if you're just starting out or if you have years of experience behind you as a reseller. So I'd highly recommend it. Everybody listening, go and find the Red Rooster Shoppe on Whatnot. And then I'm Pyrex with Bex as well. And check out some of our shows. Shameless plug for both of us. So how would you describe thrifting and sourcing in your area? Is it good? Is it bad? Is it..?
Kim: [00:20:59] It's way too good. It's way too good. I'm in a, like in a semi-rural area. Like there's, Belleville's not that far, but I haven't gone there yet, to be honest. Because there's enough. I've got one, two, three local auction companies that I don't even have to give my name. They've already pulled my items. Everything's ready.
Bex Scott: [00:21:24] So fun.
Kim: [00:21:24] I'm on a first name basis. Just hey, Kim, how's it going? Here's your stuff. So, I mean, there's never a lack of items and at decent prices. Plus we have, Peterborough has like multiple thrift stores and so I have my circuit that I do when I go into Peterborough. I sort of plan because I only have a few hours before I've got to be back home to take care of mom. So those during those hours, I make sure I hit all the key places that I need to because there's a value, what I call a valoo vilage, Value Village.
Bex Scott: [00:22:01] That's what I call it too.
Kim: [00:22:03] It sounds so much better when you buy, when you buy a dress and everyone's like, oh my God, I love your dress. Where'd you get it? Value Village. Oh, I haven't gone there yet. I really need to.
Bex Scott: [00:22:13] Very high end.
Kim: [00:22:14] Everyone needs to go to Value Village. So there's the Value Village. There's the Talize, which is nice because when I lived in Oshawa, there was one in Whitby. So now there's one in Peterborough. There's two Restores. So that's Habitat for Humanity. So that's awesome. And they have really expanded their vintage. They used to refuse vintage decor and now they've like really expanded their vintage decor. And they have great sticker sales. So.
Bex Scott: [00:22:42] I was going to say that I didn't know that they did vintage until I walked in maybe two months ago, and they had an awesome section.
Kim: [00:22:49] Yeah. So folks, if you haven't, like if it's been a long time since you've been in a Restore because you walked in and you're like, I do not need the building materials, thank you very much.
Bex Scott: [00:22:59] I don't need a toilet today.
Kim: [00:23:00] It is changed. And they do, they do sticker sales every month. So there's going to be stickers that are like 75% off what they say and their prices are already fair. So, like, I picked up a couple of end tables for my booth and I paid like $12.50 for each one and, you know, put the price tag on it is now $45. So, yeah, it's not bad at all. I just needed to, you know, polish it up a little bit and make it look a little bit prettier than it was, but yeah, Restores are great. Then we have the community care, which is an organization that does community care. Go figure. Like Meals on Wheels and drivers and home health brokerage and that kind of thing. They have one store in Bridgenorth. So that's like after one of my auctions, I can head north to the Bridgenorth one, and then there's one in Havelock where my mum goes to the senior center. So there's another. There's little thrift stores everywhere. There's like a really great thrift store in Madoc that is closed on Wednesdays, so don't go on Wednesdays. I forgot to check before I drove there because it's like a half hour drive, so it's not usually, I don't usually go that way. But then I've got like Trenton, Brighten, oh my gosh, Brighten is amazing. And I haven't even gotten into, I haven't gone into Cobourg or Port Hope yet. Like I haven't, there's so many spots to hit. Campbellford has like three thrift stores that are run by church organizations. There's a Baptist, Catholic, and the Anglican. We got it all covered. We got all the bases.
Bex Scott: [00:24:54] All the bases, yeah.
Kim: [00:24:55] I haven't been to the Baptist one yet because it's never open when I'm available. They have great stuff. And then there's antiquing. So there's like auctions everywhere. There's tons of thrift stores, and it's never, I'm never one of those people who's like, I don't have, I didn't buy anything this week.
Bex Scott: [00:25:12] Yeah. Oh I'm jealous.
Kim: [00:25:15] I'm the one who's like, I have to empty my van so I can go and fill up my van again. That's my problem is I don't have enough space in the van to put more stuff in the van and have my mom and her wheelchair also in the van, you know?
Bex Scott: [00:25:31] Yeah.
Kim: [00:25:32] Leave mom at home, and then I've got plenty more room. Can't always do that. I always have to leave space for that. So sometimes it's like, do I buy groceries? No, because I don't have space. So I have to go home first and then I'll go buy groceries locally, which I guess is good for my local grocery store. They get the benefit of the fact that my van is full of pickups from auctions and thrift stores.
Bex Scott: [00:25:57] I'm very jealous. I wish it was like that here. I thought it was pretty decent here, but... We have some online auctions that I go to weekly. They're in Calgary though, so I have to get my parents to pick up all my items, and then I have to drive them back here. And then most of it's just Value Village and the Salvation Army. But yeah, I wish I had an awesome circuit like you have, because I'd be in a lot better shape with what you're selling.
Kim: [00:26:27] Or you'd be trying to find a bigger house, building another storage shed.
Bex Scott: [00:26:35] Yeah. My husband wouldn't be very happy because we already moved from one house to this one, and he redid the whole basement storage room for me. And I've exploded it recently because of Whatnot, because I keep pulling things out of the inventory system and not putting them back. So I'm not a very organized seller.
Kim: [00:26:55] Yeah. I'm not. I just, things are on shelves and now that I have to put tags on for my, because I got a booth at the local antique market, so now I have to put tags on things. So I'm trying to like tag them as I go so that if I need to, I can just grab them off my shelf of my Whatnot room and take them to the booth without having to think, how much is this? What am I going to charge? All that kind of stuff. I can just do that quickly when when I start, because I don't tend to, like, I tend to just kind of have stuff out and I know general prices, but I don't put prices on things. So when someone asks what's the starting bid? I usually start really low because I'm like, yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I don't feel like Google lensing it. You figure it out, I'll hold it up to the light.
Bex Scott: [00:27:39] It's a moment of panic I have when people ask, I'm like ahh $3 start.
Kim: [00:27:44] Yeah, yeah. I've done it a couple of times where I've said like $2 dollars and I've literally, it's come out of my mouth and I'm like, well, I said it. So that's what it is. That was stupid. But that's what it is. Oh well, and usually people like, there's a lot of buyers who will bid it up a little because you can on, Whatnot you can actually bid against yourself if you keep swiping right, it will bid you up, which is, I actually think it's a it's a nice feature because I like doing it sometimes when a seller makes a mistake or I just feel like, you know what, I should pay a little bit more. I mean, it doesn't, you know, $2 more isn't going to kill me every once in a while. So I like that feature of Whatnot is that the buyer can actually outbid themselves. When I first started at Whatnot, I accidentally did it all the time because I was so used to bidding online. Right? Like you would just up your bid. So that, and I didn't realize the custom, there's a custom bid button, folks. That's what you're supposed to--
Bex Scott: [00:28:49] -- there is?
Kim: [00:28:51] Yes.
Bex Scott: [00:28:51] On Whatnot there is?
Kim: [00:28:52] Right beside swipe right, beside the swipe there's custom bids. So you click on that and then you can type in your max bid. And then the system will do it for you instead of you having to swipe constantly. Especially if it's--
Bex Scott: [00:29:05] -- I learned something new today.
Kim: [00:29:07] I don't do sudden death auctions. I did sudden death during the wigging-out train, but sudden death is basically, sounds horrible, especially if you're in vintage or 'sudden death, you're about to have an estate sale'. There's only 15 seconds, period. So there's no, the timer doesn't reset every time somebody bids, which it does and can take forever, right? If you do like a, even if you do a 15 second auction and people wait until, some people wait to like, they think they're sniping, but you're not sniping if it's going to reset the timer so that people wait and then they bid at the last second, and then there we go, we got another nine seconds. So here we go again. Now we wait another nine seconds. And you got to fill that space with entertainment. Right? So you got to keep talking about the thing. Here it is. Oh and sometimes I'll get distracted because the chat will be about something, right? And I'll start talking to the chat and I'll be like, oh, thanks so much so and so. And then everyone's like, no, someone else bid while you weren't paying attention. This person won. Oh, sorry. I just assumed you were the only one bidding. That's what makes Whatnot fun, is that we're kind of friendly and joking and we just have fun with it. There's no strict rules or anything on how you're supposed to run your shows.
Bex Scott: [00:30:26] You can kind of show your personality and have fun with it. And, yeah, it's different than just throwing up a listing on Facebook Marketplace and that's it.
Kim: [00:30:37] And answering 20 million questions.
Bex Scott: [00:30:39] Yes.
Kim: [00:30:40] Is this still available?
Bex Scott: [00:30:40] And you get the weirdos on there and yeah.
Kim: [00:30:43] Is this item still available? Or I'm interested.
Bex Scott: [00:30:50] Yeah. And then you reply and nothing happens.
Kim: [00:30:52] Can I give you five? I'm coming in five minutes to pick it up.
Bex Scott: [00:30:59] Yeah. I'm outside of your house. I'm here now.
Kim: [00:31:03] I'm here now. Give me your address and your blood group. And the birth dates of all your children and your mother's maiden name. And then I'll pay for it.
Bex Scott: [00:31:15] Yeah.
Kim: [00:31:16] Yeah.
Bex Scott: [00:31:18] So you mentioned that you have a booth coming up, or have you already? You've moved in already. And is it ready for business?
Kim: [00:31:27] I mean, it's open for business. So a new antique market opened up four minutes from my house so I can roll down the hill to it. So it's really convenient. They're only open right now Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. But I'm upstairs, and I grabbed two spots. I keep telling her I need more, and she doesn't believe me. Well, she will see. She will see that I need more. I need to bring her to my house.
Bex Scott: [00:31:58] Send her a picture of the Great Wall in your basement.
Kim: [00:32:01] This is Great Wall. And here's the selling room. And, like, I could fill up, I said to her yesterday, 20 booths. Give me 20 booths. But I got two, and I haven't totally, like, jam packed it full yet. Like, I'm, every weekend we bring more stuff in. So yeah, it just opened early March, the upstairs part. So I've been moving in since then. It's fairly full now. I think you would walk in and think it was full. It looks full. But I know I can cram more stuff in there, so, and I will, because I still have to bring all my toys. I haven't even done a toy section yet. My collectibles, all the pop culture stuff. But then I'm like, oh, but I also want to sell that on Whatnot. Oh, so I have to--
Bex Scott: [00:32:51] -- that's the tricky part--
Kim: [00:32:52] -- I have to balance that. So I've got like now every box I unbox is like: booth, donate, Whatnot. Booth, donate, Whatnot.
Bex Scott: [00:33:01] Yeah. And do you keep most of the larger items for your booth and then do you--.
Kim: [00:33:07] Yeah, that's what I'm going to do. Because shipping is expensive no matter what platform you're on. I actually find that Whatnot's shipping costs are not that bad when you look at like eBay and some of the Etsy shipping costs that I've seen. For clothing, yeah, we're not competing with Poshmark for sure because Poshmark has made some sort of deal, but because they were doing mostly clothing so it was small, lightweight items. Now that Poshmark is doing vintage decor and stuff, like they're going to have to change their shipping rules because there must be, they must be losing a lot of money on that. Or Canada Post is. Somebody losing money on that. I don't know who it is, but someone's losing money. But yeah, I think Whatnot shipping prices are not too bad. The minimum is what, $11 for Canadians? $11 US. So I have to math that. So $14, $15 bucks, somewhere around there.
Bex Scott: [00:34:07] Which is really good because when I do shipping off of something like Facebook Marketplace, it always ends up being $20, $25 at the cheapest. So it's definitely worth it to shop on Whatnot and get that shipping.
Kim: [00:34:23] Yeah, and a lot of us Canadian sellers have started doing little coupons and that sort of thing that you can use during the show to help with shipping too. So we're doing whatever we can to convince you to buy because our stuff is great and you can see it, you can see it live, you can see all the angles. You can ask to see a close up. You can't do that on an eBay listing, right? It's like you can zoom in all you want, but if the seller doesn't show you the bottom in a way that you want to see it, you're out of luck. Like you buy it and then be disappointed. Or you could just--
Bex Scott: [00:35:00] -- hope for the best.
Kim: [00:35:01] On Whatnot, you be like, can I see it closer? And it's so much easier because you interact with the seller. As a seller, you interact with the buyer right away. So all the questions that a buyer is going to have, you can answer right then and there before they purchase. You don't have to do the back and forth on the messaging of the app. Right? Like eBay. This question, answer, wait two days. Another question, answer. Now ain't nobody got time for that.
Bex Scott: [00:35:34] No, no. It makes it so that you almost instantly have a repeat customer and a faster sale, which is, yeah, it's awesome.
Kim: [00:35:45] And people tend to buy more than one thing in a show, right? Because once you've got that first item paid for with the shipping, the shipping costs go like way down like $0.50. I think if you added another pound worth of stuff, it's only like $4.50. This is all in American dollars, mind you, but still, not too bad. Not too bad. So it means people tend to buy, once they've bought that first item, if your show is continuing on, you're going to get more sales from that person just because they're like, well, I've broken my shipping now, I might as well buy something else. Might not be something they want, or I should say that it would be something they want, they just don't need.
Bex Scott: [00:36:28] Yeah, that's mostly what I buy. I get sucked in because my shipping has been busted and my shopping addiction, it kicks in, and then it's so easy to just swipe and it doesn't even feel like you're spending any money. And then you're like $100 US. No big deal.
Kim: [00:36:45] I mean, you just have to sell some stuff the next day. You just go online and you sell stuff, and then you buy other people's stuff, and then you sell your stuff, and rinse, lather, repeat. But it's fun. It's so much fun. It's fun. I love it, and I love the community. Just because you don't, and you don't have to go on and buy something to be part of the friendships that we have on Whatnot.
Bex Scott: [00:37:11] Exactly.
Kim: [00:37:11] There's a lot of people who are my friends on Whatnot that have never bought anything from me. Yet. But that's okay because they come, they interact, we have fun. We laugh. I can't hear you guys laugh, but I can see it. I can see the emojis. And then I know you're all laughing with me. Or Whatnot also has that fun feature where you can tap twice and it sends hearts up.
Bex Scott: [00:37:36] Yes.
Kim: [00:37:37] Which is very cute. I love just sitting there and like tapping nonstop. I'll just tap. So if there's a show, if anyone's ever in a show and you see that I'm in and all of a sudden the hearts just keep going, it's just me. Like, I'm not bidding on anything, but I love you.
Bex Scott: [00:37:52] Yeah, you'll know Kim's in your show if you see all of the hearts all the time.
Kim: [00:37:56] Yeah. That's me. Sorry. Not bidding, but I'm hearting. It's the same thing. It's considered an, I think it's considered an interaction by the algorithm. So, you know, that's why I'm doing it. I'm trying to, like, pump up that algorithm so that there's more visibility for the show so more people can watch me tap hearts. Although they can't see it. I'm tapping right now and you can see it, but no one else can.
Bex Scott: [00:38:21] Yeah. No, she's tapping the screen right now giving everyone hearts.
Kim: [00:38:24] I'm tapping hearts with my finger nonstop.
Bex Scott: [00:38:28] So do you collect anything vintage yourself?
Kim: [00:38:32] I've collected a lot of things over the years. Right now, I'm very much into Blue Mountain Pottery.
Bex Scott: [00:38:39] Mhm.
Kim: [00:38:39] Too much. And I started and it's, Owl Always Love Vintage Ali. It's her fault because she had this cute little Goebel monk, the Friar Tucks, and she had one piece and I was like that is so cute. And then I got it. And then I saw a set in an auction. And so I bought it. And then I saw another bunch of stuff in someone else's Whatnot show. And now I have, like, a whole windowsill full of these little Friar Tucks. But it turns out there's also a cardinal line, like it's red instead of brown. I got outbid on an online auction that was a full set of it.
Bex Scott: [00:39:24] Wow.
Kim: [00:39:25] I got outbid because I realized thou shalt not spend too much money. So it's like, now I got to stop, I gotta stop, I really want it. But what am I going to do with it? It's just going to go and collect dust. And then I got to dust it. What happens is, is I get really into something and then, okay, I've got enough of it. I feel like I've collected it. Thank you, next. Now Blue Mountain is going to take forever to collect all the different pieces, because they were around from 1953 to 2004, and they did over a thousand molds.
Kim: [00:39:59] So I'm not going to be over that anytime soon. But yeah. And then glass, I love gorgeous glass now that I never appreciated before Whatnot. But then, you know, now I'm like glowy glass, i've got a whole collection of uranium glass, cadmium, anything that like is UV reactive I'm on it like nobody's business, like a dog on a bone. I am on it. And I go around with my, I have a 365 flashlight now because the different wavelengths will show you different amounts. So the 365 is the one that like CSI Las Vegas uses.
Bex Scott: [00:40:42] Yeah.
Kim: [00:40:43] So it shows a lot more UV reactivity with low amounts of like uranium. So there's a lot of old crystal and glass that they added uranium to to make it clear instead of make it green, to make it look clear. So like you can go to the Restore and just be like scanning and there's no noise actually but I'm making the noise. I got to make the noise so you could understand.
Bex Scott: [00:41:11] It should have noise.
Kim: [00:41:12] Scanning the shelves like like an idjit. Because I'm like literally like up there with my flashlight. Nobody has a clue what I'm doing. And then every once in a while, someone will go up and go, oh, are you looking for glowy glass? And I'll be like, yes, yes I am. Let's have a long discussion about it in the middle of the store.
Bex Scott: [00:41:31] Yeah, but if I find any, it's mine. You're not taking it while we're having this discussion.
Kim: [00:41:36] Oh, well, I'll be like, oh, I already have some of that. I have like, I have a whole box of that. Here, let me show you some. So usually I end up being like, you should get this. It's really cute. Look at this. This is also cute. I have a lot of clear glowy glass now, so I have to stop because it is easy to find it. It's out there. There's quite a lot of old glass and crystal that gets donated. Not a lot to Value Village though, interestingly enough in our area.
Bex Scott: [00:42:04] Not here either.
Kim: [00:42:05] Different demographic, Restore versus Value Village.
Bex Scott: [00:42:09] So I just discovered that vintage jewelry has glowy glass in it sometimes.
Kim: [00:42:15] Yes.
Bex Scott: [00:42:16] And that blew my mind. Now I'm going to be shining lights on everybody's earlobes everywhere I go.
Kim: [00:42:22] Well, I'm even diamonds. Different diamonds with different inside them. So like, I have three diamonds on my wedding ring, my engagement ring, and the middle one glows like crazy.
Bex Scott: [00:42:35] Oh, cool.
Kim: [00:42:36] Like, it's like, so cool when you put a 365 against it, it's like wow, I'm like, ooh, that makes it fancier to me. But it means there's something in there that's reflecting. But it's kind of cool. Like, there's so many things that fluoresce and UV react that you can find out there, and it's kind of fun just to like turn off the lights and start scanning around at all the collectibles, go to grandma's house, start scanning and it like, okay, so it's when I like, when people hear uranium glass, they think, oh my God, it's radioactive.
Bex Scott: [00:43:10] Yeah, yeah.
Kim: [00:43:11] The raindrops that are coming down from the sky are more radioactive than this stuff. Yeah, a high amount of it, like I bought from a seller in the States on Whatnot, I bought, like, a lot of uranium glass plates and cups. It was a teacup set with plates and everything. It was a big box. And so, yes, it did get delayed at customs, and it did get opened up because it probably did set off some sort of--
Bex Scott: [00:43:38] -- the uranium detector--
Kim: [00:43:39] -- detector that they have at the border, which I hope, I hope that's why it got, because I hope that they have a good sniffer system. And I have noticed that if I do buy glowy glass from the States, it usually ends up spending a couple of days in customs. Probably they don't usually open it up because it's smaller and you know, they can scan it and see it without having to open it up. But I'm sure they scanned the teacups and the the plates and were like, this doesn't make any... Why? Why are these teacups and plates like giving off a reaction? Something's wrong here. But then they saw what it was, i'm sure. I'm sure they've seen a lot of green glass over the years because of it. Because the the green uranium glass, you can see it from a mile once you know what it is, you know, and you can like, you go into a thrift store and you're just like, yeah, straight to it. I know what that is. And I started also collecting, but then I started selling them. So I kind of like, it's a buy to sell collection, I guess, of like the swung glasses, but the five-fingered ones that look like this, the Sesame Street characters, your favorite. I love when I see those in stores. I'm just like, I'm on an auction platform. I'm just like, got to get those ones because they're so cute. They just have personalities. I have two right now, and one of them leans slightly to the side. So it's kind of like when a character like, hello, I'm falling over.
Kim: [00:45:09] It's really kind of cute. It's super cute. So I like, I don't know, if you look around, I just have every, like I like everything, which is a problem. And so I appreciate the history and the story and what somebody did with that and, you know, what was going on in that era. What's the reason, like, what's the reasoning societal-wise why, you know, women were wearing certain types of brooches, you know.
Bex Scott: [00:45:37] Yeah. Yeah.
Kim: [00:45:38] Why did we start going into this whole like, you know, avocado green and mustard yellow? Like, what was the trends and why the trends and how the trends changed. And it's kind of fun when you can like, I love grabbing something and saying to myself, I think this is like - and I'll try and date it - and I play the like, did I get this, the dating game but it's different. It's like, did I get the date of this right? I pick it up and sometimes you'll see me unboxing, in unboxing shows, and I'll pull something up and I'll go, okay, I think this is 1985-ish. And then I'll flip it over and read what it says and be like, oh no, I was completely wrong on that one. Or yes, I was right, I was right. It was only off by a year. I think that's kind of fun. I just, I really like that. So I'm a generalist. I collect anything that I like, which may not even be pretty. It might be super ugly or super weird.
Bex Scott: [00:46:39] As long as it's vintage.
Kim: [00:46:42] Well, as long as it's, well, I like newer things, but I like sustainability. I like the fact that what we do helps the planet at the same time, because we are encouraging people to take something that otherwise would have gotten thrown away. A lot of the stuff that gets donated, a lot of people don't realize that the things that get donated to places like Value Village end up either in the trash or they get sent down to South America. And they have like huge, especially clothing's the worst, but like, they have these huge markets in South America where you can go. They're usually called gringos markets because it's stuff from us North Americans. Wasteful. And you can buy like you would have a field day because there's tons of Pyrex down there.
Bex Scott: [00:47:38] Yeah.
Kim: [00:47:38] You could just, you just like, just go in and because there's just too much that gets donated and they don't have enough space on the floor. So they just, they put it into household bales. So like bales of clothing, but they put them in big pallet boxes and they may or may not make it all the way to South America without getting broken. But there's just tons of stuff that just ends up getting sold down there. People buy it for super cheap and then they resell it in their community in these big open space markets. Part of that is also wasteful because the shipping, the carbon footprint of the shipping of all that stuff to go down south so that it can be resold, why don't we just stop that cycle? So when someone says to me, oh, you're a reseller in this disappointed way, when I'm in a thrift store, I'm like, yeah, yeah, I take this stuff and I resell it, but I clean it up first.
Kim: [00:48:35] I am the one who has to run around and source it. I have to look it up and find out information about it. I've got to present it somehow, which right now is Whatnot. I got to take the time to then pack it and ship it like, I don't see you doing any of that. So yeah, my time is valuable and so I'm going to charge more than I paid for this. But the whole point of thrift stores is to keep whatever organization that they're supporting, to keep it, to keep the doors open. Right? So like when I go into Habitat for Humanity store or Restore, I know that when I buy stuff from there, if I walk out with a box load, they're thrilled. Like, they know that I'm a reseller and they're absolutely thrilled because that's the money that they need in order to build that next house for someone, right?
Bex Scott: [00:49:22] Yeah.
Kim: [00:49:22] And with community care, it's the money that they need to be able to provide that Meals on Wheels service. So I don't, when people try to guilt me I'm like, no, sorry. I don't do a lot of shopping at Value Village. I talk a lot about it because I like saying it. I like going to the small charity shops. I have so many in the area. I'm very blessed that there's so many. There's, like a cute one in Omemee that's run by this little Baptist church. We did get into a little bit of a conversation about trans rights, but, you know, I think we came to an understanding about that, and it was a little bit uncomfortable at first, but then it was okay. But yeah I wasn't going to back down on that.
Bex Scott: [00:50:11] Yeah.
Kim: [00:50:12] My kids are important. So I'm gonna defend their right to be. But you know what? There's so many cute little places that I'm lucky enough to be able to go into. And then I know I'm supporting. It's the money is going back into the community to help people. So I'm always happy with that. That's also a great excuse to buy more.
Bex Scott: [00:50:28] Yeah, I think so.
Kim: [00:50:30] It's for a good cause, honey, I couldn't help it. They really need the money. They're building a new house. I had to get it. It's not my fault. Totally not my fault.
Bex Scott: [00:50:41] I love all of the reasoning behind buying things. I have so many different reasons that I give people to that I just have to keep adding new ones to the bottom of my list and recirculating them.
Kim: [00:50:53] Yeah, it's like reseller math if you buy something for $2 and you sell it for $10, that's good reseller math. But sometimes you buy something for $2, but you also buy like ten other things. So you know, you have a cart full, but one of those things is worth ten bucks. You're going to sell that one for ten bucks. So you've covered most of it. So yeah, maybe there's extra in there, but eventually you'll sell that stuff. So it's all okay. It's all just an investment. It's all fine. But there was one really good piece in there.
Bex Scott: [00:51:30] Yeah. What's the worst thing you've ever ended up buying? And worst in terms of you thought it was going to make good money or that it was something special and it ended up being just the opposite.
Kim: [00:51:44] Oh, gosh. I don't think there's a lot of worst. I don't, because I don't spend a lot. I'm, I am super cheap. I've had some things where I get them home and I break them while I'm washing them or cleaning them. There's a lot of Blue Mountain pottery that's the big long egret neck, like swan necks, and they are so easy to break. And that's just like, that's one of those sad moments. I have, I have like a little burial ground for pottery in the garden. So when there's a really nice piece, I put it in the garden and it becomes like, you know, a little, I just think of it as a new house for a bug. So there's a lot of vases and stuff that, you know, now they're a house for a bug or spider or something.
Bex Scott: [00:52:37] It's the bug amusement park.
Kim: [00:52:39] So there's, yeah. So I have to plan my garden now around my vintage cemetery that I have, but I don't want to get rid of the stuff because it was like, you know, the glaze was super pretty or there was just something about it that I really liked. So it goes in the garden where I know eventually it's going to break apart. And, you know, winter takes its toll on it. But I don't know, there's just something about the circle of life, of just bringing it back and making my garden pretty somehow. But yeah, I think the most disappointing for me is when I buy something, whether I spend a lot or I spend a little on it, and I break it before I even have a chance to buy it. Sell it, I mean. Buy it, I already bought it to sell it.
Bex Scott: [00:53:21] That's been my issue lately, but it's because my daughter takes it off the floor and she drops it because she thinks it's fun to break things. Right now she's in that awkward, breaking age, and I had a Blue Mountain Pottery candy dish that I just got, and she picked up this old butter dish and she threw it on top of the candy dish. And that was the end of that.
Kim: [00:53:43] Yeah, yeah. Well, eventually they they grow up and they go to kindergarten. So you've got some time eventually, eventually they start.
Bex Scott: [00:53:52] Four more years, four and a half more years of breaking my things.
Kim: [00:53:56] Yeah. My mom likes to grab stuff. And because of her dementia. And she uses the wheelchair for mobility, so she tends to stick things down her top or down her pants. And because, so if she goes through one of my boxes, there's usually a few things that go missing that I don't get to sell. And then the other day, there was this gorgeous Nippon candy dish that was really, it had a beautiful, beautiful hand-painted scene on it. Like, it was just gorgeous. It was going to be a keeper. And yeah. Mum actually put it underneath her boob.
Bex Scott: [00:54:39] Oh no.
Kim: [00:54:40] That was her storage spot, was up her top and and let her boob hold on to it because you know, they, as you get older ladies, they sag. So, but then she forgot that it was there. And then she stood up to go to the bathroom and it just smashed all in the bathroom floor. I heard the crash and I went, another beautiful thing has bit the dust.
Bex Scott: [00:55:03] Yeah.
Kim: [00:55:04] But mum loves, still loves going through all the boxes and seeing what I got and looking at the things and I've done a couple of live shows with her. I don't do it as much now because she is much worse. But when I first started on Whatnot, I would do shows with mum and sometimes I'd say, you know, oh, this is starting bid is $10 and she would be in the background going, it's not worth that much, two bucks. I'm like, please ignore my mother. Thank you for bidding.
Bex Scott: [00:55:34] And then you'd find it in her shirt later on. Because she secretly really loved it.
Kim: [00:55:38] I was really careful that if I sold something, it went up where she couldn't reach. That is a benefit of having her in a wheelchair. She can only reach so high. And she can't get down the stairs into the basement, so if it makes it to the basement it's safe. Safe from her, not necessarily safe from me dropping it or something, but yeah, every once in a while when I break vintage, I cry a little.
Bex Scott: [00:56:05] Yeah.
Kim: [00:56:06] An angel in heaven cries too. It's a sad moment.
Bex Scott: [00:56:14] So do you have any advice for resellers who are just starting out? Or if they want to get on Whatnot or find a booth close to them, or just start out in general?
Kim: [00:56:28] Well, you need inventory and you need to spend money to make money. That's reality, is you have to buy stuff. I would be careful about when you first start out about buying things at high prices. Go, I would say start with your local auctions. Like online auctions where you can pick up if possible. There's HighBid.com has a lot of Canadian and US auctions. There's Max Sold does a lot all over Canada. Maxsold.com. And then of course you can just Google to find out where there's your local auction house. And usually they'll have a website. And if they do online auctions or if they do in-person auctions. If you can go to in-person auctions, oh my gosh, there are deals to be had because people have gotten away from going to live auctions.
Bex Scott: [00:57:26] I've never been to one.
Kim: [00:57:27] Oh, they're fun. They're, you just need to behave yourself. You need to say, you know, I have a maximum and I'm going to stick to it because it starts to get personal. Like you don't want the other person to win kind of thing.
Bex Scott: [00:57:39] Yeah, I could see that.
Kim: [00:57:41] So you have to be careful with that. But if you're if measured at the beginning, look for deals. Pick what you like. Don't try and follow any trends. Don't try to follow what you think is going to sell. If you like it, if you see it on the shelf or you see it online, a picture of it online on an online auction, and it speaks, like if you're like, if you get excited about it, then that's the stuff you should sell. Don't try and just sell anything to turn a profit, because it won't be successful, because you won't have that enthusiasm for it. It'll start to become more of a chore and less enjoyment. That's my first recommendation. When it comes to being on Whatnot and selling, I would suggest, first of all, that you get on Whatnot and watch shows for a while, watch a lot of shows, different shows in different categories. Get to know people, start following people, start interacting in other sellers shows, just, you know, even just saying, oh, that's really pretty, I really like that. You don't have to buy, just come in and chat. We love chatting with everybody. We love hearing, you know, don't come in and be negative, nobody wants that anywhere. But just come in and say hi. And you know, when we say, how's your day? You can answer or not answer, it's up to you. I'd say 80% of the people who are in shows are quiet in any show, big sellers or small sellers, 80% of the people are quiet and that's okay too. But if you're going to be a seller, you need to be interactive because it's a social, it really is a social network platform. It's all about collaborate.
Kim: [00:59:32] Collaboration is the key. So once you get started, you need to let people know, I'm, you know, I'm going to have my first show. Book your show as soon as you're approved to be a seller. I would recommend going through and getting a referral from somebody who's already selling on Whatnot. Not only does that seller get a bonus if you do start selling on Whatnot, they get some, they get some money for it, but you are more likely you'll be put up higher on the list to be looked at, because there is a wait list for certain categories, but they want to see inventory. So you need to build your inventory. Because if you just say, I really, really like cards or I really, really like glass, they're going to be like, that's great, but show us what you got. And they want to see a lot of inventory because they want sellers who are going to sell volume, right? The more you sell, the more they make because they take 8% of the cut, which is not bad. It's not bad at all. And then there's the payment processing fees. But they have to pay that to somebody else. They're just passing that cost along to us. But they're taking 8%. So they want you to make as much money as possible. They want you to be successful. So they're not going to pick people that don't have inventory. So you need to take lots of pictures and do a collage of, like, use your little Google Photos to make a collage because I think you're only allowed, like, when I applied, I think you were only allowed like eight pictures to attach.
Bex Scott: [01:01:10] I think when I did it was two.
Kim: [01:01:13] Oh gosh. So like I did collages. I went around and like took pictures of everything. And at that time I did not have a 10th of what I have now. I have an issue, but I think I applied for handmade category because that's what I had the most of at the time in inventory, but then once you're approved as a seller, you can go just about anywhere. And I've been approved to sell at luxury bags. Not that I have any to sell, but I made sure that I got approved for that. There's a quiz.
Bex Scott: [01:01:45] Oh boy, I would fail that quiz.
Kim: [01:01:47] You would not fail the quiz. It's a pretty obvious quiz. Like, should you sell something fake?
Bex Scott: [01:01:55] Okay. Yeah, I thought it was gonna be on luxury bags.
Kim: [01:02:00] That's, you know, that's a really hard one.
Bex Scott: [01:02:03] Yeah.
Kim: [01:02:04] I think I should say yes. Yes, you should sell fake stuff. Like most of the questions are pretty, pretty easy. It's pretty easy. But they want to make sure that they don't approve you until you've already been a regular seller, that they can see a track record for because they don't want people getting scammed. They don't want scam artists. So they want to see that you got a decent inventory and that you've got some experience selling. So if you don't, even if you tell them about how you sold the most Girl Guide cookies when you were ten, right? Like, whatever it is, Boy Scout, whatever Boy Scouts sell, I don't know, apples, one of apples in our neighborhoods, but like they want to see that. And then once you get approved, just have fun. Like just make it fun. Forget about trying to sell. The selling will happen as you get more experience and you build your following. Like, I'm getting close to 2000 followers now after a year.
Bex Scott: [01:03:04] That's amazing.
Kim: [01:03:05] But that's also because of the collaborations that I've done, like organizing Raid Trains and the people that I've met and through them meeting other people. So, you know, always trying to go into other people's shows as much as possible, even if it's just say hi. Hi, love you, I hope you have a great show. Isn't that a cute item? Oh, that's so pretty. And then I may not be able to stick around, but I try to at least say hi whenever I can. But it's the collaborations that make it happen. It's going on, getting to know people, and getting on the Raid Trains or make up your own Raid Train. That's what I did. I wanted to do a Raid Train, so I just started openly inviting the world to it. And now it's like, it's totally full. I think April, we're almost full. So March is already full. April's almost full. And it's fun, just monthly for anybody who's a seller to sell anything they want, as long as it's sustainable. Because it's all about sustainability, right, my Raid Trains. I'm big on that.
Bex Scott: [01:04:13] Mm. I'm gonna have to join one of those.
Kim: [01:04:15] Yes. You should. How you sign up.
Bex Scott: [01:04:20] Sounds good.
Kim: [01:04:21] It's fun, it's fun. It's sellers from all over the world. Most of them are US sellers. So it's great for Canadian sellers to get introduced to their buyers because with a Raid Train, for those who don't know, basically one person starts their show and then when they're finished at a certain period of time, so they have usually it's an hour, they then raid, which sounds like a pirate thing, when I first started, I was like, what are we doing? We're raiding? I don't like, what, I don't want to raid somebody. I, what, I don't want to steal someone. Like, because I thought stealing, that's what I thought. I though raid/stealing. But it's basically you just take all of your viewership and bring it to someone else's show. And when they're done, they bring it into someone else's show, etc., etc. And a train is where you organize it so everything's on a schedule and everybody goes, basically, it's like you start at the engine and you move everybody back to the caboose at the end of the day, that's how I like to think of it, is everyone moves along the cars in an orderly fashion, buying all day long. And having fun.
Bex Scott: [01:05:33] Mhm. Yeah. In our next one, by the time this episode comes out we will already have had the Linens Raid Train coming up on Friday.
Kim: [01:05:42] Very excited about, I have so much to go.
Bex Scott: [01:05:46] You're kicking that one off, right? And then I go right after you.
Kim: [01:05:49] Yes. Yeah. I'm starting at 9 a.m., so I don't mind kicking it off. It's probably the toughest spot in any Raid Train.
Bex Scott: [01:05:59] Yeah, I was going to say.
Kim: [01:06:00] Like because it's just, there's no expectations of me selling too much. So like, oh, you were the first on the train, it's fine. It's okay, she was first, that's why. No, I'm just kidding. People buy all day long on Whatnot. That's the great thing, right? You never know who's going to come in. And linens is so hot right now. People are really interested in it. And ephemera is getting hot again. The thing is, there are trends on Whatnot that are fascinating to watch because you can see, you can actually see this, like it flow from the sellers through the buyers. And then a lot of buyers are also sellers. So then they start building a collection. And then all of a sudden they're selling and I've just watched it like, a lot of like ephemera especially, has moved through so many categories now because people are starting to realize how cool it is, how exciting it is. And linens. I love linens, I love little linens and big linens and pretty linens.
Bex Scott: [01:07:06] I like the sheet sets. That's my favorite. Anything with like a nice floral pattern. Love it.
Kim: [01:07:12] Yes, I have a lot of that, but it's on beds. I tend to use it, not store it.
Bex Scott: [01:07:18] That's good. You should.
Kim: [01:07:20] Yes, but it's so pretty that sometimes I feel guilty. You know, every time I put it in the laundry, I think it's shortening its life just a little more. But it's made it this far. I've got sheets from the 70s, from my like, from my bed, from my parents bed, from the 70s. So yeah, that's one of the benefits of living with your mother is all her linens came with her.
Bex Scott: [01:07:45] Mhm. Awesome. Well those were some perfect tips if you're starting out as a reseller on any platform, especially Whatnot. But thank you so much, Kim, for joining me today. And everybody go and find Kim on Instagram at the Red Rooster Shoppe and on Whatnot as well. And check out some of her shows. They are super fun. So thanks so much, Kim.
Kim: [01:08:07] Thanks for having me. Love you.
Bex Scott: [01:08:09] Love you. Have a great day.
Kim: [01:08:12] You too. Bye.
3 cups sifted flour
1½ teaspoons salt
1 cup shortening
8 to 10 tablespoons water
For PYREX 5½-inch Pie Plate # 206
Is cup sifted flour
¼ teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons shortening
1½ to 2 tablespoons water
GENERAL DIRECTIONS FOR TWO-CRUST PIE
The best pie makers handle crust gently. They mix the dough with a delicate touch, four the board sparingly, and press lightly with the rolling pin. Result-tender pie crust.
Sift flour and salt together into a PYREX Mixing Bowl. Cut in shortening until it is like coarse meal.
Sprinkle water, a tablespoonful at a time, on flour-shortening mixture. Mix gently with a fork. Use only enough water to make dough stick together.
Press dough into a ball. Divide into 2 parts, one slightly larger than the other.
Bottom Crust. Flatten larger part of dough with hand. Roll out on a lightly floured board or a pastry cloth to a circle about ⅛ inch thick and about 1 inch larger than the inverted PYREx Pie Plate.
Fold this circle of dough in half and transfer to the Pie Plate. Unfold and fit into the Pie Plate. Avoid stretching.
Trim dough with scissors, leaving about ½ inch overhanging the edge of the Pie Plate. Add filling according to pie recipe used.
Top Crust. Roll out remaining dough to a circle about 1 inch larger than the inverted pyREx Pie Plate. (It will be slightly thinner than bottom crust.)
Fold dough in half and cut slits near center to let steam escape while baking. Unfold this top crust over filling. Crust should extend about ½ inch all around pYREx Pie Plate. Tuck overhanging crust under bottom crust edge and seal by pressing to-gether. Form desired edge.
Bake according to directions in pie recipe used.
VARIATIONS OF TOP CRUST
Lattice Top Roll out top crust dough about an inch thick. Cut into strips. Lay half of strips over filling, then cross with other strips to form a lattice top. Fasten ends of strips by pinching to edge of bottom crust. Bake according to directions in pie recipe used.
Fancy Top Roll out top crust dough about inch thick. Follow directions in pie recipe being used for cutting fancy shapes and for baking.
Bex Scott: [00:00:02] Hey everybody, it's Bex Scott and welcome to the Pyrex With Bex podcast where, you guessed it, I talk about vintage Pyrex, but also all things vintage housewares. I'll take you on my latest thrifting adventures, talk about reselling, chat with other enthusiasts about their collections, and learn about a bunch of really awesome items from the past. Subscribe now on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you love listening to podcasts so you don't miss a beat.
Bex Scott: [00:00:30] Hey, everybody, this is Bex Scott, and you're listening to the Pyrex With Bex podcast. On today's episode, I'm going to be talking about cooking and baking with your Pyrex. Christmas is around the corner, and that means there's going to be a ton of holiday cookies, desserts, turkeys, all of the fixings for Christmas, and all the parties that are coming up. And I have the perfect cookbook that I want to go through with you guys. So I found this cookbook, it's called Pyrex Prize Recipes, and I've talked about it in a previous episode before, where I went through an angel food cake recipe that was baked in a 404 mixing bowl. And since then, I've been going through this recipe book and it's pretty amazing. The recipes are great and the photos are great. They showcase different food that's been cooked and baked in specific dishes, but some of the backstory about why they put it together is really neat as well. So I thought I would share some of the holiday recipes they have in it with you guys. If you're adventurous enough, maybe you can try them out and let me know how they go. But other than that, I thought it would be kind of fun to go through.
Bex Scott: [00:01:46] So this book was published in 1953 by Corning Glass Works, and it cost $2.50 when it was published. Now, full disclosure, I think I paid about $40 for it because I saw it on Poshmark and I had to have it, and I've seen one other one come up on Marketplace, so I'm pretty glad that I got it when I did, because it's been a valuable book for me. So the inside says 'dedicated to all men, women and children who love to cook in Pyrex ware'. I'll read the introduction to you guys because it's pretty neat and gives a bit of a background to the book. So it says 'This book of Pyrex Prize Recipes has been published in response to the many requests received from Pyrex ware users. All the recipes in this book have been tested and perfected under the supervision of Dr. Lucy M Maltby, Director of Home Economics and in charge of Corning Glass Works Famous Pyrex Ware test kitchen'. Now imagine what that would have been like being Dr. Lucy in charge of the Pyrex Ware test Kitchen. That would be pretty amazing to be able to have all of these casseroles and dishes, and to be able to test out different recipes and see if they work, if they flop using Pyrex.
Bex Scott: [00:03:13] And I've baked quite a few things with my Pyrex, I haven't cooked a lot. We mostly use our Pyrex to serve food out of in our house, but I have never been disappointed with anything that I've baked in a Pyrex ware dish. So it says 'You who are old friends won't think us vain, we are sure, when we claim to be popular among you. You have welcomed us into your homes. You have let us help with the cooking, the serving and the storing of food. And we've enjoyed it. Three out of four families in the United States use Pyrex ware. You've told us why you like Pyrex ware, and we would like to pass on your reasons to the newcomers who may join our family of friends as a result of this recipe book. You have given us many good reasons why you like Pyrex ware'. And this is pretty neat, so I know why I like Pyrex ware, but this is from all of the submissions that they received before they printed this recipe book first.
Bex Scott: [00:04:12] And they go dot dot dot... 'Because Pyrex ware is so easy to wash clean. Odors and flavors don't cling to the smooth glass surface'. It's pretty true. Second, 'Because Pyrex dishes keep their newness even after years of use'. Third, 'Because Pyrex ware is inexpensive to buy', not so much anymore. Fourth, 'Because Pyrex ware is dependable, there is only one Pyrex ware made by Corning Glass Works. With more than a century of experience in the manufacture of glass products'. Fifth, 'Because Pyrex ware is economical. Pyrex ware heats rapidly, bakes faster, and saves fuel'. Sixth, 'Because Pyrex ware saves dishwashing, the same dish can travel from refrigerator to oven to table and back to refrigerator'. To bring you up to date, we would like to review the variety and types of Pyrex dishes, which have been made available for your convenience. So this is where they go into each of the different types of Pyrex that they have, which I thought was pretty educational. And as a reseller of Pyrex, I've had a lot of people ask me, How can I use this flameware? Or can this dish go in the microwave or on the stove top or in the oven? So this is a great reference if anybody listening has been wondering about specific types of Pyrex that they have.
Bex Scott: [00:05:42] So the transparent Pyrex ovenware, which is used in the oven but not over direct heat on top of the range or under the broiler. It is designed for baking, serving, storing in the refrigerator, or for freezing in the freezer. Cake dishes round and square. Deep pie dishes. Casseroles with knob or utility covers, measures, custard cups, loaf pans, oven roasters, pie plates, mixing bowls, and utility dishes. So this is the transparent Pyrex ovenware. Next up, my favorite colored Pyrex ovenware, which is also used in the oven but not on top of the range or under the broiler. It too is used for baking, serving, storing, and freezing. Casserole, round, square and oblong baking dishes, pie plates in decorator colors. Refrigerator dishes. Color bowls. Hostess ware, casseroles, and ramekins in basic colors. Pyrex flameware, which is used over direct heat on top of the range whether gas, electric, oil, coal or wood. Anybody using wood, oil or coal anymore? It is also used for serving, storing or for baking in the oven. Double boiler. Saucepans with lock on covers and hang up rings. Percolators. Teapot. Skillet. Pyrex dinnerware, which can be used in the oven. It is beautiful enough for entertaining and sturdy enough to take hard knocks and high oven heat. The kind of dinnerware that you have dreamed of owning. Dinner plates, cups and saucers. Bread and butter plates, salad plates, and many other dishes.
Bex Scott: [00:07:26] So let's get into some holiday recipes. In my family, we always have mulled cider, and every single year when we go over to my parents place, and even when we were living at home still, my mom would always make mulled cider. It would be in a huge soup pot on the stove, just ready to drink throughout the day. And in this recipe, it says the dish you're supposed to use is your Pyrex nine cup percolator, and the amount is 12 servings for this. So the ingredients you're going to need are two quarts of cider, one cup brown sugar well packed, three sticks of whole cinnamon about two inches long, half a tablespoon of whole cloves and half a tablespoon of whole allspice. And I've had cider without the cloves and allspice, it pretty much just makes it apple juice. So the spices definitely make a difference. The first step, put cider and sugar in a nine cup Pyrex percolator. Place spices in the percolator basket. Let boil gently for ten minutes. Remove percolator pump in basket containing spices. Then there's no need to strain the cider, as the percolator basket itself acts as an excellent strainer. Three, serve very hot. And this is amazing! I've never thought of using a percolator for anything other than coffee or tea. And my mom, she uses a little tea ball that you usually put tea leaves in in the big pot, but this would be so much easier. So I think we're definitely going to try this one this year.
Bex Scott: [00:09:03] This next recipe is for the hot chocolate lovers out there, and I know that's everybody in my family. We go through so much powdered hot chocolate regardless of the time of year. And I remember in our house, my mom as well would make stovetop hot cocoa for us from scratch, and it was amazing. The difference was huge. So I haven't tried this recipe yet, but it's definitely on my list for the holidays. And it says serve directly from the Pyrex percolator in which the cocoa is cooked and saved time and dishwashing. And this recipe is made in your Pyrex four cup percolator, and it gives you six servings,. So you'll need three tablespoons of sugar, an eighth teaspoon of salt, which is interesting because my grandpa also put salt in his coffee, and I've tried it with the salt and without, and it makes a huge difference. It's so much better with the salt. So that's a little tip if you want to try putting a pinch of salt in your coffee grounds. Three tablespoons of cocoa, one cup of cold water, three cups of milk, a quarter teaspoon of vanilla extract. And this is cute, six marshmallows, if desired. Exactly six marshmallows. One for each cup. That's a pretty small amount. I think I put about ten marshmallows, if they're the tiny ones, in each of my hot cocoa cups. So the first step is mix sugar, salt, and cocoa together in a Pyrex four cup percolator. Add water, place over moderate direct heat. Simmer gently for two minutes, stirring constantly. Two, add milk and bring slowly almost to boiling point, but do not quite boil. Three, remove from heat. Add vanilla. If desired, beat with a rotary egg beater to prevent scum formation. Four, put a marshmallow into each cup and then pour in the hot cocoa. If anybody out there makes this hot cocoa, let me know how it tastes. I'm especially interested because it's made in the Pyrex percolator.
Bex Scott: [00:11:15] So next up, before we get into the good stuff, the baking and cooking with your Pyrex dishes, I thought I would go through what the book says about how to care for your Pyrex ware. So this section is called the ABCs of Pyrex Ware Care, and I've had a lot of people ask me over the years about how I clean my Pyrex, what they should and shouldn't do with it, what's the best way to get this and that off of it? So hopefully this sheds a little bit of light from the experts themselves. So a) Avoid wet surfaces. Don't set hot Pyrex dishes on a wet table or sink. The spot of water cools the dish too rapidly in one place. b) Be sure to use a wire grid under a Pyrex flameware dish on an electric range. These grids are free at any Pyrex ware sales counter. Or write to Corning Glass Works. That would be great if we could still do that. c) Cool hot Pyrex dishes before adding liquids. Pyrex ware can stand hot temperatures, but pouring liquid into a hot dish cools the dish too quickly in one spot.
Bex Scott: [00:12:24] When making white sauce, remove the hot Pyrex flame ware saucepan from the heat and cool slightly before adding the milk to the hot butter and flour mixture. d) Deep fat frying? No. This is a capital N a capital O with an exclamation mark. Never use Pyrex ware for deep fat frying. It's not that the hot grease will break the Pyrex dish, but if in that one chance in a million the dish is broken, the fat would catch on fire. Be on the safe side. e) Empty dish. Don't put any empty Pyrex flameware dish over the direct heat on top of the range. Always put liquid, fat or other food in the dish first. f) Faster baking. Pyrex ware bakes faster than shiny metal pans, so less heat is needed. If you're using a recipe which has not been tested for Pyrex ware, reduce the oven temperature about 25°F. Thus, if an old recipe says bake at 350 degrees, use a temperature at 325 for Pyrex ware, g) Greasing helps. A well greased Pyrex baking dish washes easier. If a Pyrex ovenware dish is filled very full, handles and rims should be greased too. This is a very good point, because I've made a lot of cakes in my Pyrex ware, and everywhere that hasn't been greased is pretty hard to get stuff off of unless you soak it or you clean it right away. So that's a pro tip right there. h) Handle hot Pyrex dishes with dry cloths. A wet cloth on a hot Pyrex dish cools the dish too fast in one spot. Also very good. i) Icy cold to roasting hot. Pyrex dishes can go directly from freezer to preheated oven. Frozen food thaws and bakes in just a little longer time than the normal baking period, and you can skip the wait for frozen food to thaw at room temperature.
Bex Scott: [00:14:26] j) Junior's food. When heating nursing bottles, cans of baby food, etcetera, bring water to boiling and remove Pyrex flameware dish from heat. Then put the bottles or cans in the dish. Otherwise, the dish might be permanently damaged when the water boils and leaves dry spots underneath the bottles or cans being heated. k) Keep its newness. Soap or detergent and hot water will wash Pyrex wear dishes sparkling clean. Never use scratchy cleansers. And this is a very good point because there are certain cleaners that people use now, like bar keepers friend that are great for removing utensil marks, you can use them on the inside, but if you use them on the outside of the Pyrex dish, that especially with the ones that have the gold or the metallics on the outside, it will fully take them off. And that is from personal experience.
Bex Scott: [00:15:23] l) Low direct heat. Use low to moderate direct heat with Pyrex flameware. m) Mineral deposits caused by hard water in some localities may leave white spots on dishes. Avoid this by washing the Pyrex double boiler bottom, for instance, with soap or detergent and hot water after each use. Stubborn mineral deposits may be removed by filling the park's flameware dish half full of water, adding two tablespoons of vinegar, and boiling a few minutes, then wash in hot, soapy water. n) Never let a Pyrex flameware dish boil dry. o) Occasionally, overcooking may cause brown stains. if hard to remove by just soaking the dish in warm water, add baking soda, three tablespoons to one quart of water. Diluted laundry bleach also is good for removing stains. And this is something that I wish more people did because I have bought, I think I talked about this in one of my other episodes, I've bought so many Pyrex dishes that have the brown stains on them that people haven't even attempted to take off, or else they have and they just haven't used the right methods. So awesome point. p) Pyrex ware has a two year replacement policy. Any dish or part of Pyrex brand Ovenware, which breaks from oven heat within two years from date of purchase, may be replaced by any dealer in Pyrex ware in exchange for the broken pieces. Any glass part of a Pyrex brand flameware dish, which breaks from heat within two years from date of purchase, when used according to the instructions, may be replaced by any dealer in Pyrex brand ware in exchange for the broken pieces. That doesn't really apply to us now, but it was nice that they did that back then. It's kind of like Tupperware. We will close our ABC's at this point, in the hopes that we have set down some helpful reminders on Pyrex ware care and use. So if any of these were surprising or helpful to you at all, I would love to know.
Bex Scott: [00:17:21] Next up we have the cooking and baking with Pyrex. So these will be the recipes that you can try out this holiday season and test on your family. The first one I've chosen is called Anna's Apple Pie and it says 'Apple pie still remains America's favorite dessert. Bring it to the table made just the way your menfolk - yes, your menfolk - want it in this Pyrex pie plate'. So it says you'll need one tablespoon of flour, five cups sliced apples, one and a quarter cup sugar, half a teaspoon of nutmeg, half a teaspoon of ground cinnamon and one tablespoon of butter. And check the show notes. Because this recipe I'm talking about now is for the filling of the pie. But in the show notes, I will have the recipe for the actual pie crust that Pyrex recommends. So it says 'Prepare the crust according to the directions on pages 96 and 97', which is what I'll give you guys. Number one, sprinkle one tablespoon of flour on unbaked bottom crust in the Pyrex pie plate. And this is using two crust pie in Pyrex nine and one half inch pie plate number 210. Two, arrange apple slices on crust. Sprinkle with sugar and spices. Mix together. Dot with butter. Cover with top crust. Three, Bake for ten minutes in a hot oven 425°F. Lower temperature of oven to moderate 375 and bake 30 minutes longer or until apples are done. Time, Bake about 40 minutes in all, temperature 425. Hot oven for first ten minutes and then 375 moderate oven for 30 minutes. Amount, eight servings and dish, Pyrex nine and one half inch pie plate. So the reason I chose to talk about this recipe is not only because people love apple pie in general, but because of this one little part right here. It says, 'Serve this delicious apple pie with cheese apples'. So I've heard about people making apple pies with cheddar cheese in the crust. I've never tried it. I've always wanted to. So I figured maybe a cheese apple is something like that. But it says, 'To make these, shape quarter pound sharp American cheese into balls about one inch in diameter. Dip the balls into red food coloring. Insert a cocktail pick into each cheese apple and stick these picks into a real apple. The apple will stand erect if three short pieces of picks are inserted for tripod legs'.
Bex Scott: [00:20:06] There's a picture of it. It's an apple. It's standing on toothpick tripod legs. And there are a bunch of cheese apples sticking out of it. So if anybody tries that as well, please let me know how it goes. Because it's another thing I've definitely never heard of. Then in the small print on this recipe, it says 'Day in and day out use won't hurt your Pyrex pie plate. It will come up sparkling after every pie you bake'.
Bex Scott: [00:20:39] Okay, so next up we have Christmas mince pie. And if anybody has had mince pie and likes it or doesn't like it, regardless, I'd love to know because I still don't really know what mince pie is or mince meat is. And maybe I should just try making it. So the recipe is... bake about 35 minutes in a 400 degree Fahrenheit oven. 6 to 8 servings. And this you'll be using your Pyrex eight and one half inch Flavr Savr pie plate number 228. And it says you'll need one package prepared mincemeat nine ounces, or two and a quarter cups moist mincemeat, sounding good already, three quarters cup applesauce, and half a cup seedless raisins. I'm not sold on this recipe. Okay, so it says prepare crust according to directions on page 96 and 97 for fancy top variation of two crust pie in Pyrex eight and one half inch Flavr Savr pie plate number 228. So again, if you're going to try out this recipe, check my show notes and I'll have that pie crust recipe for you. Number one, prepare mincemeat according to the directions on the package. Add applesauce and raisins. Pour filling into bottom crust in the Pyrex pie plate. Make a fancy top crust in the shape of a seven inch Christmas tree. That's pretty cute. Sprinkle with white or colored granulated sugar if desired, and place on top of pie filling. Bake until crust is nicely browned. And they have a nice picture of it in this glass Pyrex pie dish. It's the one with the little scalloped edges with the little handles, and there's a Christmas tree with the granulated sugar sprinkled on top. And it actually looks really nice. It says make Christmas mince pie the day before, store it in a Pyrex pie plate, then heat it up just before serving.
Bex Scott: [00:22:40] So the last recipe I thought I would share is a potential good side dish for your Christmas dinner. And because I'm in Canada, I picked this one, and it's called Canadian style bacon with candied sweet potatoes. Says 'Canadian style bacon is smoked cured pork loin'. I'm pretty sure that's just back bacon. 'Other cuts of smoked ham, thinly sliced, may be used'. So this one you're going to be using your Pyrex two quart utility dish. And it does 5 or 6 servings, 325 degree Fahrenheit, slow oven and bake about 45 minutes. You'll need 1 pound of cooked sweet potatoes, and in brackets it says (number three vacuum can). I don't think you need to use, I don't even know what that is. Is that like a can of sweet potatoes? Anyway, just go out and buy some real sweet potatoes. Two thirds cup brown sugar, well packed. A quarter teaspoon of salt. An eighth teaspoon ground cinnamon. Half a pound of Canadian style bacon, thinly sliced. 18 one half slices of pineapple, number two can. Exactly 18. Quarter cup of juice from pineapple. Two tablespoons butter or margarine, and parsley for garnish. First step is slice sweet potatoes in quarters lengthwise and arrange in two rows in a greased Pyrex utility dish. Sprinkle with brown sugar, salt, and cinnamon. Two, arrange alternate slices of bacon and pineapple on top of potatoes. Pour pineapple juice over all. Three, dot with butter. Bake. Garnish with parsley. So I hope you guys have enjoyed this episode of baking with your Pyrex Ware, and I can't wait to hear if any of you try out any of these recipes, I'd love to know! I'm definitely going to try a few of them myself, and I hope you guys have a wonderful Christmas dinner and a wonderful Christmas.
Bex Scott: [00:00:02] Hey everybody, it's Bex Scott and welcome to the Pyrex with Bex podcast where, you guessed it, I talk about vintage Pyrex, but also all things vintage housewares. I'll take you on my latest thrifting adventures, talk about reselling, chat with other enthusiasts about their collections, and learn about a bunch of really awesome items from the past. Subscribe now on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you love listening to podcasts so you don't miss a beat.
Bex Scott: [00:00:30] Hey everybody, this is Bex Scott and you're listening to the Pyrex with Bex podcast. On today's episode, I'll be chatting all about Christmas. That includes Christmas themed Pyrex, some of the traditions that I had with my family as a kid, and just everything that I love about the season. So growing up, my family, especially my mom, really loved Christmas, and November would roll around and Christmas carols would be playing. She would start decorating right after Halloween ended, and I remember growing up, I wasn't super excited about having Christmas carols playing that early, but now I absolutely love it. And I've become a little bit like that where Christmas starts early in our house, for me at least, where I'm humming Christmas songs, I'm starting to play them on the radio, and I'm thinking about decorating the house. And this year especially, I've gotten really into vintage Christmas. And growing up I remember my mom had all of her granny's and her mom's Christmas decorations on our tree. They were super delicate little vintage Christmas balls and lights, and they were some of the most beautiful ornaments that we had and my mom still has.
Bex Scott: [00:01:50] So every year when we go over to their house to decorate their big tree, I see the little vintage ones and pull them out and of course, there's still some that my brother and I have made over the years. There's some with sprinkles, some with markers, and they're definitely not the highest quality decorations, but they still have a place on that tree, which is really amazing. So I've kicked off Christmas this year with a ton of vintage Christmas shopping, and I should probably cut myself off at some point. But I was looking on Facebook Marketplace and there was a lady selling her full mid-century Christmas decoration collection. She was selling just the regular part of her collection as well, which included a ton of Holt Howard and Lefton and everything. Unfortunately, I didn't buy that portion of it, but I did buy the Christmas side, which I'm still unboxing. And the reason I've gotten so big into buying the Christmas this year is because I have a huge Christmas sale coming up. I've recently started selling on Whatnot. If you haven't heard of Whatnot, you should check it out, but beware, it is super dangerous because it's very easy to shop on there. So essentially, Whatnot is a platform where you can download it on your phone or on your desktop, and sellers go on there live and it's a live auction and a live sale.
Bex Scott: [00:03:23] So you're talking to the buyers and chatting and they're writing comments and purchasing from you while you're showing all the items that you have. So I have this big Christmas sale coming up, and it's going to include a ton of the little vintage flocked deer and Santas and elves, as well as ceramics. And I'm going to even be selling a ceramic Christmas tree. So that's one of the things I promised I would do. We were going through all of our boxes in the basement and cleaning up a bit, and my husband said, Hey, I noticed you have three of these ceramic trees. I said, Yes, yes I do. There was an awkward pause and I said, okay, I guess I have three. I'll get rid of one of them, but I'm keeping these two for sure. So that one's coming up in my sale next week. So aside from all of the amazing mid-century vintage Christmas pieces I managed to pick up, finding vintage Christmas Pyrex is always one of my goals. There are so many amazing pieces, and at least where I am in Canada, in the wild they don't ever show up, very rarely, if you do find something, you're super lucky. So I've been looking online, trying not to spend an arm and a leg on these items. And I think I mentioned in a previous episode of my podcast that I do have one of the Christmas mugs, but I thought it would be really fun in this episode to go over some of my very favorite Christmas Pyrex pieces, and then some of my favorite Corning employee Christmas pieces. Because I have to say, Corning treated their employees right with those gifts. I wish I could go back and work for them just to get the amazing Pyrex that they gave at Christmas time.
Bex Scott: [00:05:13] So I thought I would start off with a pretty cool ad that I found when I was looking into Pyrex, Christmas, and Corning. So this ad was in the Saturday Evening Post and I believe it is from December 9th, 1939. So this is before there was the nice colorful Pyrex. This was the clear Pyrex that you got the ovenware for baking and cooking. So it says, 'See these Merry Pyrexmas bargains at your favorite store'. There's a little Santa, and he's pointing out all the black and white photos, and he's saying 'Pyrex ovenware prices reduced 30% to 50% in the last two years'. And on the right, there's a housewife holding her casserole wrapped with a red ribbon, and it says, 'Here's a gift that gives double, and it's catching on fast. Rich, wholesome fruit cake baked in a Pyrex casserole offered by leading bakers. Look for it in your favorite store or bake shop, or use that pet recipe of your own'. And then they go into all of the different items of Pyrex that you can buy for Christmas.
Bex Scott: [00:06:27] So number one, 'Mother will be upset if she doesn't get this cup set. Six Pyrex utility cups for custard, storage, or tidbits. Only $0.39'. And these are the little V shaped custard cups, the glass ones that you can get that stack really nicely on top of each other. Next, 'Let them eat cake, breads and meats look tasty too in this gleaming Pyrex loaf pan. Now only $0.45. Pyrextra'. Pyrextra. It actually says 'Pyrextra special for modern cooks, this round casserole is a honey. Knob cover keeps food hot on table. Quart sized $0.50'. 'Flakier pie crust all year round with this Pyrexmas pie plate bargain. Only $0.20'. Imagine a pie plate for $0.20. 'Cooks as good as it looks. Oblong utility dish for cornbread, desserts, cake, meats, baked stores serves. Now only $0.50'. 'A 2 in 1 pyrexmas surprise. Round casserole does double duty with pie plate cover. Three quart size $0.95, two quart, $0.75'. That's a pretty good deal. 'Give her this round cake dish with handles. She'll give you cake, gingerbread, Brown Betty cobblers. You can't lose. Only $0.35'. 'Deep dish meat and chicken pies taste yummy in these individual Pyrex baking dishes and apple pie. Wow. Eight ounces now $0.10'. Any woman'd get excited over this deep oval casserole. Knob cover. At new low price. Popular quart size now only $0.50' and they spelt woman would as w o m a n apostrophe d. 'It's not only a gift, it's a give away. Nine pieces of sparkling Pyrex ware. Six gleaming custard cups in a handy wire rack. An eight ounce measuring cup and a 9.5in pie plate. The whole combination can be yours for only $0.89'.
Bex Scott: [00:08:34] Oh, no. Okay, this one's going to kill you guys. 'She'll go into Pyrextacies over this beautiful set. Ten pieces, including bread or loaf pan, casserole with knob cover, utility dish, pie plate, and six gleaming Pyrex custard cups. Now only $2.15'. Pyrextacies. Remember that one, guys. Oh, this one's handsome. 'A handsome 15 piece set, six custard cups, nine and a half and ten and a half pie plates, six cup flameware teapot, two piece casserole, utility dish, eight ounce measuring cup, loaf pan and one quart open baker, only $4.75'. And then on the bottom left it says 'There are few gifts that go to a woman's heart like gleaming Pyrex ware. And this year, you can make your gift all the more exciting because in many cases, a dollar will buy twice as much of this modern cooking, storing, and serving ware as it would have a couple of Christmases ago. Buy Pyrex ware singly or in sets. And remember, sets are attractively gift boxed at no extra cost. Look for the trademark Pyrex stamped on every dish and the famous replacement offer'. And then on the right it says 'It's different. Pyrex flameware. Three new designs, flameware saucepans, glass handles detach for serving, storing, lock on covers only $1.65'. 'Flameware seven inch one pint frying pan for use directly over open flame, complete with detachable chrome handle, $0.90'. 'Grand for cream sauce and icings, one and a half court flameware double boiler $3.95'. A Christmas morning eyeful, 2 new flameware percolators, stainless glass pumps. Nine cup size. $2.45'. And last but not least, we have 'New low price, sturdy Pyrex all glass tea kettle. Smart for table use. Full year replacement offers two and a half quart size. Was $3.25, now only $2.95'. And one of the last pieces of Pyrex that I actually bought was this sturdy Pyrex all glass tea kettle. I definitely did not pay $2.95, but it's very interesting to see. It's quite a wide tea kettle, and it has a little lid that I'm looking for on the top. So very interesting ad to find.
Bex Scott: [00:11:02] Next we have a more modern ad, and this was when all of the beautiful colored milk glass came into play. So this next ad is from an unknown periodical in 1955, and it says 'Solve your gift problems right here with beautiful, durable Pyrex ware'. And it has four different sections. We have gifts under $2, gifts under $3, gifts under $4, and gifts under $10. And the gifts under $2, we have the Pyrex oven roaster. 'The Pyrex round baking and serving dish comes in desert dawn yellow or desert dawn pink. The Pyrex covered bowl casserole lets food brown more evenly in desert dawn yellow or pink as well'. Gifts under $3. 'The Pyrex colorware bowl set has lots of different uses for baking, serving, storing, and mixing. Bowls nest to save space. Complete set of four only $2.95'. And that's the primary set they're talking about. Gifts under $4. We have the Pyrex Colorware oven and refrigerator set. That's the primary fridge set. 'For baking, serving, storing. Yellow dish holds one and a half quarts. Blue dish one and a half pints. Red dishes one and a half cups. Get the complete set of four for only $3.25'. Then they also have the percolator and the double boiler and the flameware for under $4. And then the gifts under $10, this is the Pyrex dinnerware sets. And I love these. It says, 'They're beautiful enough for entertaining, yet durable enough for everyday family use'. And they have a blue, pink, green and red.
Bex Scott: [00:12:54] And one last ad that I really liked. This one says, 'Just in time for Christmas giving. New Pyrex ware decorator casseroles. Any woman who cooks will be delighted with these beautiful and practical decorator casseroles. Their famous Pyrex ware in new oval shape, and the cover becomes an extra baking and serving dish on hot pad. Choose from four smart designs and color combinations, each packed in attractive gift carton. 48 ounce size $4.50'. And this is talking about the turquoise snowflake on white, the white snowflake on turquoise, the white snowflake on charcoal, and the white daisy on pink. And then on the right they have a new Pyrex instant coffee maker and warmer. And I actually just came across tonight the warmer. I purchased it from someone and it's pretty cool. I'm excited to use it because I do have the carafe as well. And the one in this ad is the starburst carafe, which is beautiful.
Bex Scott: [00:13:58] So I know that Pyrex didn't make a ton of Christmas dishes, but the ones that they did make, I think they did an amazing job on. And there are three that are my absolute favorites. And the first one is the holiday casserole. So this one was made in 1960 to 1961. It's an 024. It's a two quart round casserole with a clear single knob lid. And it came with a brass cradle with two large plastic handles. And it's a wreath design on it with little pine cones. And I found this one in an antique store in British Columbia two summers ago for about $20. And I remember walking into the store, looking around, not expecting to find any Pyrex, and I came across this display and saw this red bowl, this red casserole, and I grabbed it, and I ran to the till as fast as I could, and I wasn't paying any attention, I probably ran down a few people during this whole process, but I was so excited to find a piece of Christmas Pyrex in the wild that it was going to be mine no matter what.
Bex Scott: [00:15:11] So next we have the Golden Leaf casserole with cradle, and I don't have this one yet. It's a 404 mixing bowl with a clear single knob lid, and this one came with a brass cradle with flat walnut handles. And it's similar to the holiday casserole, but the pattern is more of an ivy leaf. It's gold metallic, so it's a really beautiful bowl. Next up I have the deluxe buffet server with candle warmer, and this one is the Golden Poinsettia. And I remember I bought this one off of Poshmark about three years ago. It was posted as a beautiful dish with no condition issues at all, and I remember opening it in the mail, getting it from Poshmark, and there was a huge scratch on the side and I was so upset. But this one, it still has a place in our house. It's displayed with our other dishes and it's so pretty. I especially like the top of the lid because it does have the golden poinsettia pattern on it. And it included a brass cradle with flat walnut handles and a dual candle warmer on the bottom. There's two sizes of matching carafes as well, an 8 cup and a 12 cup. And they both have the really pretty poinsettia design on the outside.
Bex Scott: [00:16:37] So next up, I have a feeling that this one is a little bit harder to find. I've never seen it in real life. It's the Merry Christmas and Happy New Year Bowl from 1971 and Corning employee holiday gift, it says, with the text Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. And in Pyrex Passion, where I'm getting all my information from, my Pyrex Bible, it says other versions existed in green with orange holly and one with the design printed on opal. It was a Cinderella Bowl. The date estimated is based on 1971 Crazy Quilt promo, which includes the same background color, which I thought was pretty cool. Next up we have Merry Christmas and Happy New Year too, late 1960s. So this Christmas themed item was produced as an employee holiday gift for the Charleroi plant. A matching mug, 1410, was also created. The date estimate is based on the backstamp of matching mugs, and it's a round casserole with a clear lid that had the text Merry Christmas and Happy New Year on one side. Definitely one of my all-time must-have pieces here. I don't know how many were made, but who knows if I'll find one one day.
Bex Scott: [00:17:56] Okay, so next we have more employee Christmas pieces. The first one is a Merry Christmas plate from 1965. This one I don't know how I feel about. If you guys have seen this one in the Pyrex Passion book or in real life, let me know your thoughts. So this was produced as an employee holiday gift. It's a luncheon plate and it has a flamingo pink solid border on the outside, and it has a green and red design of a snowman with a holly on the inside. And below the design is the text 1965 Merry Christmas. It's cute, it's cute. The snowman is a little interesting looking, but I'd love to see one of these in real life. Next up we have the Green Castle Christmas party bowl from 1964. For the 1964 Christmas party at the Green Castle plant, employees received a one pint bowl as a holiday gift. The maroon text reads Corning Christmas Party, Greencastle, 1964. The bowl includes eight Christmas images around the circumference. Christmas mugs with matching images exist, but were produced in the mid to late 1970s and include the microwave backstamp. Next up we have Merry Christmas mug, mid 1960s. So this was a nine ounce mug. And I love this mug because I have a Santa addiction. Anything Santa, especially vintage Santa, I need. I don't have this mug. Another one on my list. My list is pretty long. So this one was nine ounce mug with red text and graphics. The mug includes the text Merry Christmas along with an image of Santa on each side. The backstamp says Corning, along with the mold number produced as an employee holiday gift. Next up we have Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year mug from the late 1960s. This one has red text and a bluish green and red graphic. The text reads Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. The mug includes green holly leaves with red berries and a red ribbon, likely produced as an employee holiday gift, and it matches the casserole that I mentioned earlier. Another late 1960s was the Rum Pum Pum Pum bowl and mug. This was produced as an employee gift as well, and they included red text and graphics of a drummer boy and a lamb. The red is the same color used on the Red Circus Child feeding set, and the backstamp reads Pyrex brand tableware. So there was a ten ounce bowl and a nine ounce mug, and they're really cute. They have a little Drummer Boy walking in a circle around the mug and the bowl.
Bex Scott: [00:20:41] Now we're into the early 1970s, and this is the Merry Christmas Santa mug. And this is the mug that I was able to find in Portland, Maine. And it cost me $54 US and I'm in Canada, so increase that by however much you need to to get the actual price that I paid. It was worth it though. I have no regrets. So this mug is a nine ounce mug with all red, all green, or alternating red and green graphics. It includes the text Merry Christmas in a Christmas Tree design, along with holiday images produced as an employee gift. And I have the all red version of this one. And the last one I have is from the mid 1980s, and this one was a flared handled mug, ten ounces with red and green printing. One side includes a graphic of Santa riding a candy cane with holly leaves, while the other side says Season's Greetings, produced as an employee holiday gift. And this one is pretty cute, but you can definitely tell the style change of the mugs that were in the 60s. And then you fast forward to this one. The graphics look different and even the mug style is a little bit different, but definitely still cute and would love to add it to my collection.
Bex Scott: [00:22:06] And while I was doing my research, I came across this blog post. It's from Corning Museum of Glass Pyrex Potluck, and if you haven't checked out that site, make sure you do, because there is a huge amount of information for Pyrex collectors and lovers on there that'll be a really interesting read for you. And it's from the Chronicles and it's called A Very Merry Pyrex Holiday. And it talks about how during the Christmas season, Pyrex advertising was focused on one side consumers and one side store buyers, and the marketing was totally different for them. To the store buyers, it was important for Corning Glass because these were the people who were responsible for closing the final sales with shoppers, and they offered different promotions like counter cards and display kits to make stores into what they called gift headquarters. So they periodically sent out inserts called the Pyrex Sales Maker. And it was a little publication read by store buyers such as Home Furnishings Daily. Many publications offered display setup ideas to increase sales, and I found an example of one of them online. And it's actually really cute. The illustrations are amazing. There's little drawings of Pyrex and ladies behind the the desk or the tills selling their Pyrex, and it gives ideas of how the department store should be setting up their Pyrex for people during the Christmas season to hopefully buy them.
Bex Scott: [00:23:47] So, idea number one, 'Show the seven advertised items sitting on top of their gaily designed Christmas packages, set in front of a small Christmas tree. Add a theme sign reading New Pyrex Holiday House gifts'. And in this little illustration, there's a tiny little Charlie Brown-looking Christmas Tree, and they have a carafe and a bunch of casseroles on their beautiful boxes in front of this tree. Second idea, 'Set up a Christmas party table in a traffic location, and show the items featured in the Pyrex ware ad. On a tea stand, mount the Pyrex ad along with the copy line The Holiday Look for the Christmas Cook'. Idea three, 'Mount a copy of the ad on your regular Pyrex display fixture to remind shoppers that Pyrex ware is needed for holiday entertaining, and makes an ideal Christmas gift for homemakers'. Idea four, 'Promote the glamor of Pyrex for Christmas entertaining by grouping the items featured in the Christmas ad next to mannequins dressed in party frocks. Sign reads Hostess ideas for holiday entertaining, today's look for today's cook'. Idea five, 'Brew coffee or tea in your Pyrex beverage makers and serve to Christmas shoppers on Christmas shopping nights in your store. Mount copy of ad near the serving table', and there's two little Christmas decorations with a holly or a Garland and two women in cute little dresses serving coffee out of their Pyrex carafes. And the last idea, 'In outpost locations, use Pyrex casseroles and beverage makers as containers for holiday greenery. Show a mounted copy of the Christmas ad beside the arrangement'. This one I can actually see people doing in their displays of Pyrex. They have a Pyrex casserole full of greenery and then they have one on the side, it's the pink scroll, and it's full of Christmas balls, which is pretty neat.
Bex Scott: [00:25:49] So these promotions all came to the stores in, it looks like a package, and there's an ad below that says 'Pyrex Ware Christmas promotion to make your store gift headquarters. Your Pyrex Ware Christmas Display kit contains these 12 counter cards', and I wish I could find these in real life because they are adorable. There's little Santas and Christmas Trees and a Santa with his sleigh, and these are all just the pop up cardboard stands or the ads that they would have in the store while you're shopping and it says will arrive before November 15th. Pyrex collectors and lovers out there, I would like to know what your number one Pyrex piece would be on your Christmas list this year. I know for me it would be the Pink Gooseberry fridge set. That's definitely on my list to complete, and I hope that you guys all find some amazing Pyrex under the tree this year.
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Transcript
Bex Scott: [00:00:02] Hey everybody, it's Bex Scott and welcome to the Pyrex with Bex podcast where, you guessed it, I talk about vintage Pyrex, but also all things vintage housewares. I'll take you on my latest thrifting adventures, talk about reselling, chat with other enthusiasts about their collections, and learn about a bunch of really awesome items from the past. Subscribe now on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you love listening to podcasts so you don't miss a beat.
Bex Scott: [00:00:30] Hey everybody, this is Bex Scott and you're listening to the Pyrex with Bex podcast. On today's episode, I'm chatting with Kelli Szurek about her amazing Pyrex collection, some of the pieces she's been able to find over the years, and where she thinks Pyrex collecting is headed. Hey everybody! I am super excited because today I have my second guest on the Pyrex with Bex podcast and it is Kelli Szurek. Welcome, Kelli. Thanks so much for joining me today.
Kelli Szurek: [00:00:57] Thank you. I'm glad to be here. Super excited. I love Pyrex a ton, and it's always exciting to me when there's other people out there who are avidly collecting and are the younger generation, because we want this to continue on for a long time, right?
Bex Scott: [00:01:13] Definitely. I agree, and I was really excited when we started chatting on Instagram and I found out that you collected. It's hard to find people who are really passionate about it, who are open to chatting and kind of like the same things in the vintage world. And you also have your own podcast. So tell me a little bit about that.
Kelli Szurek: [00:01:33] Sure my son and I do a podcast. It has nothing to do with Pyrex. I occasionally do talk about Pyrex on the podcast, but our podcast is about just our relationship, and he just started high school this year. And so it's just kind of been the process of junior high changes, high school changes, struggles, just things going on in our life and how we just handle hurdles. And also we recently expanded to having guests on there just because sometimes our life isn't that eventful, which is good because, you know, I don't want to talk about all the trouble he gets in school all the time.
Bex Scott: [00:02:12] Yeah.
Kelli Szurek: [00:02:12] You check, you guys can all check that out. You can find On Our Best Behavior wherever you listen to podcasts.
Bex Scott: [00:02:18] Perfect. I've checked out a few of your episodes so far and they're awesome, so I definitely recommend it. So you love Pyrex, I love Pyrex. What was the beginning of your Pyrex addiction and how did you get started collecting?
Kelli Szurek: [00:02:32] So looking back, I cannot remember that anyone ever had Pyrex. My grandparents, I was fortunate enough to know my great grandparents for a long time. They lived until they were in their 90s and nobody had Pyrex. And my mom had one dish, but she didn't have the lid. It was just a yellow casserole dish. And I always wondered, like, this dish is so cool and it's so colorful. Why is it like, just like this random piece of kitchenware that we have? But I was young., I really didn't know anything about it. And then when the pandemic happened and the whole entire world shut down, I just found myself scrolling on Facebook Marketplace and I, for some reason, I don't know why it started showing up, but I just started seeing pieces of Pyrex and I just got really interested. I love these patterns. I love these colors. Not knowing how huge the Pyrex collection and world is. And my very first piece that I ever bought was on Facebook Marketplace, and it was the Spring Blossom Cinderella set. And from there I was hooked. Once I found out there was, like, this isn't just a one thing, there's like millions of, it has a whole collection, right? And a whole set and a refrigerator set and all these casserole dishes. And so I just kind of got sucked in and got on a deep dive and through the internet and books, and I was like, oh my gosh. And then I just started buying.
Bex Scott: [00:04:05] I love it. That's kind of similar to my story. I started off during the pandemic as well, and it spiraled. And I remember the Spring Blossom was one of my very first as well. My grandma had it hidden away in her pantry and she pulled it out one day and I said, oh, I just started collecting this stuff. And she was like, oh, it's yours. You can have it. So I've kept that to the side. I don't use those ones, but it definitely has a special place in my heart as well.
Kelli Szurek: [00:04:34] What kind of like hooked you? Was it the memories from when you were young?
Bex Scott: [00:04:38] I think I remember my mom using Pyrex a little bit. She had the Autumn Harvest casseroles, those were on our table a few times during the years, but I started when I was cleaning out my grandparents garage, and they had some of my great aunt's dishes in big rubbermaid bins, and we were unpacking them, and I found a lasagna pan and a couple primary bowls. And that was my, kind of my gateway bowls, I call them. That started everything. And I went on Instagram, and I instantly found all these pink displays and turquoise, and I started messaging other collectors. And that's kind of when I was fully hooked. And then, like you, I went down the Marketplace rabbit hole looking for anything I could find and just buying the different sets. And yeah, it's a fun addiction.
Kelli Szurek: [00:05:31] Yeah, yeah it is.
Bex Scott: [00:05:35] And how does your, your family feel about your collection?
Kelli Szurek: [00:05:39] They've done well. They've embraced it pretty well. I really, you know, when Justin and I, who is my husband, got together, I really didn't collect much of anything. Like I remember him asking me what do you collect? And I was like, well, I collect these, like, Starbucks mugs from places I've been, you know, he's like, well that's not like old and vintage. I'm like, well, I don't, never really been a collector. And so he was really into like going to antique stores and checking out rummage sales, garage sales, estate sales. And I was just kind of like, why do you want to look through, like, old people's gross junk? But then when I got hooked on the Pyrex, then I understood and I was like, oh my. I remember the first time we went into an antique store after I had gotten hooked on Pyrex. I was like, this is amazing. Can we go to all of them? And he's like, what happened to you? So. He has done well in trying to, you know, he'll be like, hey, I think, he'll try to like, remember what the patterns are called, like, oh, hey, did you see over there they have this or that? And my son Maccoy, he's awesome about it. Like, he is really happy for me that I have something that makes me so happy. And he calls it his inheritance. So he always wants to know, like, how much is this going to be worth? How much is this going to be worth? What's the most rare pieces? So we've talked about that. And he always says like I'm not going to sell any of it. I'm just going to keep it all. Okay. We'll see. We'll see how your wife feels.
Bex Scott: [00:07:09] Yeah. He'll carry on the the collection for you.
Kelli Szurek: [00:07:15] Yeah, I hope so. I mean that would be, that would be sweet. You know, I think that it is really important for the younger generations to continue it on. Right? Because once people don't care about it anymore, then it kind of fades away, you know?
Bex Scott: [00:07:29] Yeah. My husband, he has been great with allowing me to have such a large collection and go to the thrift stores every week, and I think it's because he has a huge BMW old car collection, so he fixes them up and flips them. So if he was to say that I couldn't do my Pyrex collecting, then I might have an issue with his car collecting.
Kelli Szurek: [00:07:53] Yes. You have something to hold over him, right?
Bex Scott: [00:07:57] But I think that's awesome that your son calls it his inheritance. We have two boys and a girl, and I'm hoping, our baby girl is almost a year old, so I'm hoping that she's going to be the one that carries it on for me, because it will probably all be left to her because the boys, they don't want it right now. So.
Kelli Szurek: [00:08:15] You know, as we get older, like, right, our appreciation for things changes. And so that might happen.
Bex Scott: [00:08:22] Yeah. That's true. I'll keep working on them. Alex, he goes he goes to the thrift stores with me. And he's really good about finding things and being excited about it. So there's still hope.
Kelli Szurek: [00:08:33] It's good that you share that. He'll remember that always like, oh mom, remember when we used to do this or hey, I found this piece, you know, so it will be special to him.
Bex Scott: [00:08:40] Yeah, exactly. And what would you say are some of your best Pyrex finds that you've had over the years?
Kelli Szurek: [00:08:50] So I feel like, you know, a lot of the basic stuff, I, I have all of the basic stuff and I, a lot of my sets I have pieced together. So I have been very picky about, you know, only spending like so much money on them. And so a lot of my stuff I've really just pieced together because I think if you buy the whole set, you end up spending more money. Right? So I have just kind of slowly done that and, you know, really only great like steals. I found like, you know, steals like, oh, this is, you know, $0.25 at a garage sale, but it's a, you know, Woodland 401 bowl, whatever. Oh, sweet. I'll take it. You know, and I am a sucker for if I see anything like that's really, really cheap and, you know, dishwater damaged. Whatever. I'll take it home because I just don't want it to go into, like, the junk. So I'm really bad about that. But one, a few years ago and I think this might have been early on, but I saw on - I'm in a lot of Pyrex groups - and somebody had posted locally here in Minneapolis that they had a Barcode set for $90, and I don't think they realized what they had.
Kelli Szurek: [00:10:06] And I was like, I'm coming right now. So I got that. And then I also my other thing I was really, really proud of is I got a green dot bowl on auction for $30, and I just was over the moon about that. Yeah. So those are really my only like super great finds that I feel like I got for like a reason, you know, a way cheaper price. It's hard. I always want to be that person who goes into the thrift store and like, finds some diamond in the rough, but I feel like they're getting better at knowing what people are interested in, and then they will pull it aside or put it up on auction or something like that. And so then, you know, then it's not just laying there for us to find. So I'm still waiting to, like, stumble across a garage sale where somebody has like a, you know, Starburst Atomic Space Saver just sitting there for a dollar. That's my dream. Yeah.
Bex Scott: [00:11:03] I'm in a bunch of the Facebook groups as well, and I always see people posting about what they've found and how cheap it was. And I always get jealous. I'm like, oh, I never find steals like that.
Kelli Szurek: [00:11:15] And I think it doesn't happen that often because I used to do the same thing. I'm like, I'm going thrifting all the time. I'm stopping at so many garage sales, you know, I did it so much at one time that I just was like, would go home empty handed and feel so defeated. So then I was like, I'm done doing this. I need to take a break. I feel too disappointed.
Bex Scott: [00:11:35] And there was, I think, last week or a couple of weeks ago in one of the groups, you might even be a part of it, but a lady mentioned that she found the Blue Dianthus Cinderella bowls at Goodwill and it was like 7.99 and 12.99 or something crazy like that. And that would never happen over here where I am in Canada. So.
Kelli Szurek: [00:11:58] So in Canada, do you see like more of the, I mean, you're just a country up from me. It's not too far away. But I always feel like in different countries, like they have a different variety of things, or it seems like certain things are easier to find and other things are harder to find.
Bex Scott: [00:12:14] Yeah. We, I don't know, I found a ton of primary here. I feel like every time I go to the store, I see the yellow primary bowl everywhere. What else has there been? Um, lots of Spring Blossom, Forest Fancies, Old Orchard. It haunts me. It follows me around everywhere. And I see it.
Kelli Szurek: [00:12:39] It's here too.
Bex Scott: [00:12:40] Yeah.
Kelli Szurek: [00:12:42] That and the Early American like, runs rampant here, so.
Bex Scott: [00:12:45] Oh, really? We don't have any of that here.
Kelli Szurek: [00:12:48] Oh, really?
Bex Scott: [00:12:48] Yeah, I think I've seen one and it was in British Columbia and so I picked that one up. But yeah. Yeah, the thrift stores are fun. I think my best find at the thrift store so far has been, what was it, a divided dish. It was the black and white snowflake and I think it was 999 and I was pretty happy about that.
Kelli Szurek: [00:13:14] Yeah it is. It is a rush. It is a rush.
Bex Scott: [00:13:17] That's the problem. The adrenaline you get from it. And you keep wanting to go back more and more.
Kelli Szurek: [00:13:22] And, you know, I don't know about you, but the problem I have now is I have so much and I have so many that I love. Like, how do you display all of it? I feel like I have to constantly like switch it out to display it. Otherwise, I don't know, it's tough. I'm like, we need to build a house that has like built ins in every single room so that I can just put the Pyrex in every room. Justin's always like, okay, we'll do that. Yeah.
Bex Scott: [00:13:53] I always love when the hardcore collectors have a whole basement that's lined with either built ins or Ikea shelves, and you just walk in and they have lighting coming from everywhere. And that would be my dream, I think.
Kelli Szurek: [00:14:07] I always wonder, like, what do those people do for a living?
Bex Scott: [00:14:12] Yeah.
Kelli Szurek: [00:14:14] Or like, how long have they been, you know, you just wonder everyone's story. Like, how did this madness start for you?
Bex Scott: [00:14:20] Yeah. So what would you say is the piece that you've paid the most for?
Kelli Szurek: [00:14:25] So I personally didn't pay for it. But there was a Balloon bowl, chip and dip set with the bracket on Facebook Marketplace in the city, Minneapolis, and I think Justin paid $250 for it for me, it was a Christmas present.
Bex Scott: [00:14:41] Oh, nice.
Kelli Szurek: [00:14:42] I thought that was a good price for it. Like, don't even try to barter with her. Like 250 is a real fair price. And I think he did try to like get her down to 200 still. And she was like not happening. I have a lot of other people that want this, so take it or I'm moving on. Like take it.
Bex Scott: [00:15:01] Yeah, I don't have that set yet. It's on my list though. I passed it up for a really good deal maybe 2 or 3 years ago, and I still regret it. I could have had it.
Kelli Szurek: [00:15:11] That's the thing that's tough, right? Like when you see it, you have to make like a rash decision to buy because it's not like Target where you can just go back and get it tomorrow or go back and get it next week, you know.
Bex Scott: [00:15:25] Yeah. And especially if it's on Marketplace, people are savage on there. Nobody holds anything. And I don't blame them because there's so many no shows. But you have to be within seconds of it being posted. And what would you say is your all time holy grail unicorn piece that you really want to have?
Kelli Szurek: [00:15:45] Well, I always say, like, if we ever win the lottery when it's $1 billion, I want, you know, I think this is most people's holy grail, but I've never even seen it in real life, is the Lucky in Love dish. So I think there's maybe, you know, and I'm not, don't quote me on this because I don't know for sure, but I think like there's like two known in the whole entire world. So I saw one goal. I saw one on auction and it was, you know, over $10,000 that the bidding was at. So that'd be another one I'd just love to, like, stumble across for, you know, a dollar at a garage sale. But my other ones that I really want, the turquoise Atomic Starburst, the space saver, and which, you know, is attainable. So it's just, you know, you have to be ready to spend the money when you find them. And the Pumpkin Butter print. So those are like my three, you know, like Lucky in Love I'd probably never, ever get. But that would be my holy grail.
Bex Scott: [00:16:46] What does the Pumpkin Butter print go for in your area usually?
Kelli Szurek: [00:16:49] $1,000 for a set.
Bex Scott: [00:16:51] That's like us here too.
Kelli Szurek: [00:16:52] So $800 to $1200. And I've even tried to, like, bid on like bowl by bowl to try to get like, I'm like, okay, if I can get them for $200 a piece slowly, you know. When they sell individually, I feel like they sell for even more because people are probably trying to do the same thing and piece their own together. And then you need like that one last piece and then you're paying more than you should for it. Or some people just have way more money and can, you know, afford it. I try to have a Pyrex budget, so.
Bex Scott: [00:17:25] It's a smart thing to do. Right now I don't have one and I'm kind of all over the place, so it's dangerous. Yeah.
Kelli Szurek: [00:17:32] And then you get to the point where you're like, oh, I've done that, where I've bought something and then I've already had it. Oh shoot, I couldn't remember, but it was a really good price, I don't want to pass it up, like that whole thing. So. Yeah.
Bex Scott: [00:17:46] And do you guys use your Pyrex at home?
Kelli Szurek: [00:17:49] So anything that I have that I've picked up at like flea markets or anything like that, that's just kind of been, you know, like 401 bowls, we'll use those for cereal bowls at our house. I have some things that I feel so blessed that people know about my Pyrex love. And a lot of times, like a family member will pass and they'll say, hey, I'm cleaning out. So, you know, going through my grandma's things, she has this, do you want it? Yes. And so there's a couple of casserole dishes that I'll use and I always remember, like, who got me it or who gave it to me. And so then it's like special when I use it like, oh, this was from so and so when it was her grandma's. And I just think that that's really special.
Bex Scott: [00:18:32] I love that about collecting and having other people kind of looking out for you and wanting to pass the dishes to you because they know that you'll look after them and it'll be important to you just like it was for them.
Kelli Szurek: [00:18:48] And I also, but it also makes me realize the other side of that, which is how many people are going through their grandparents things and just throwing all this in the garbage, because a lot of people are like, well, we're just going to toss it if you don't want it or drop it off at Goodwill or whatever, which is I guess that's fine. But yeah, if you're just going to throw it away, call me. I met this, I've met a lot of people on Marketplace and just in the community, and I bought a dresser from this one guy, and he, just like a random thing, and he was telling me, like, he cleans out houses for a living. So like stuff that's going to get like condemned or knocked down and he'll go through and then he'll kind of like pick through stuff and resell it. And he's like, oh, you know, he's like, what's your thing that you love? And I'm like, oh, Pyrex. And he's like, oh, I wish I would have known you last week there was this house or so much of it, and I just left it all behind. And I'm like, you call me when that happens.
Bex Scott: [00:19:42] Yeah.
Kelli Szurek: [00:19:42] And he's like, okay, just so you know, like you have to be ready to come right now. And I'm like, well, if you call me, I'll try. And if I can't, I can't. But yeah, please reach out to me if you ever, if that ever happens again. And of course it hasn't happened but yeah it was that was a recent meet. So I'm still hopeful that he'll think of me.
Bex Scott: [00:20:01] I was watching a story on Instagram of a collector that I follow, and they went to an estate sale out in the country and not everything sold. So they just took, the company, or the family took everything and put it into a big dumpster. And the collector was going through and trying to find as much as they could that they could salvage. And I was just thinking, oh, I would have loved to be there to save everything and bring it home. It's kind of like me with cats and dogs.
Kelli Szurek: [00:20:32] You bring them all home?
Bex Scott: [00:20:33] Yeah.
Kelli Szurek: [00:20:36] I know people, I also have two bunnies, and so whenever, whenever there's, like, a bunny that needs a home, people are always like, you need to help this bunny. I'm like, I can't take any more animals, I can't.
Bex Scott: [00:20:50] Oh, and you mentioned before when we were chatting before the podcast that you love to collect other things as well. So what are some of the the other things that you really love?
Kelli Szurek: [00:21:03] So I feel like once I started collecting Pyrex, then I just kind of went down this rabbit hole of vintage glass and Fire-King has some. I don't love all Fire-King, but you know, I like the the super popular stuff that everyone does. The tulip bowls, the jadeite bowls, they have these teardrop bowls. So I have those. So Fire-King and then Hazel-Atlas they make like these cute dot bowls. So I have those and Federal Glass also has some like, I honestly am not like a big enough collector of those things to actually even tell you the real name of what they're called. But yeah, just as time has gone on and I've seen pieces or I've seen stuff, I'm like, oh, I have to have that. It's so cute. So yeah, I have randomly collected some of that. Like Fire-King has their own version of a primary set, so I have that. One of my other really unique items that I have is I have a primary set in a sealed box. And so I love that.
Bex Scott: [00:22:09] That's amazing.
Kelli Szurek: [00:22:09] That was a gift too. So that's kind of what's fun about Christmas is I'm like, okay, here's all the Pyrex I still need. Find it. But he actually, that was actually a Marketplace find too. And yeah, so that was, I feel like I'm really surprised with how much local stuff I've found that's a big find. And then, you know, just throughout I've really taken a liking to vintage sprinklers. If they're metal, like I have to have it, I use them to water my lawn. But I just think it's fun and they're cool. And I love bunnies. So I also collect any cute vintage bunny figurines. My mom had collected some Lefton when I was young and when she died, I kept all of that. So that has brought me on a trail of trying to finish, you know, like I didn't know when I was younger. I remember like, oh, this angel was a set of 3 or 4, and now I have to find them because she, there's only one left. So. But those are harder to, I feel like I've had a hard time finding those. Or people, which I remember we were going to throw that in a donate box and, you know, they go for $35 a figurine, which I think is expensive. So, you know, they're hard to find. But I was at a flea market, I think it was this summer, and I was at like in line to check out. I had found a pink striped bowl that was super cheap because it was it was a little faded. But we, you know, so that's one we just use in the kitchen. And I was standing in line and I saw one of those Lefton angel girls or poinsettia, I think it's a Lefton Poinsettia Girl and she just has like this poinsettia dress on. She's little. And I was like, oh my gosh. Like I saw one. And it was, you know, super cheap. It was like a dollar. So I was like, that was my every once in a while, you know, you get that like, I'm so excited about this. So yeah. So that's just kind of like, I end up getting into like, you know, if I start to see things repetitiously, sometimes they'll start to call my name and some things I'm just like, this is cute, I like it, I'm getting it. And then it just kind of starts a whole nother trail of junk. Yeah. My treasure. Right?
Bex Scott: [00:24:19] Yeah. It's easy to to fall into the next hole of collecting the next best thing. My other addictions are the little blue birds. They were my great grandmas. So I've started collecting those. And then the Merry Mushroom canisters and anything mushroom I love. So that's another issue that I have to deal with.
Kelli Szurek: [00:24:42] I know I also get in like that, I was a child of the 80s, so anything like Pound Puppies, Care Bears that's still in the box, I'm hooked. Like, oh, I have to have that.
Bex Scott: [00:24:54] Oh, I love Pound Puppies. I forgot about those. I had quite a few of those.
Kelli Szurek: [00:25:00] So now when I find like the old ones, I actually, one of my favorite finds was an antique store here, I live in Anoka, it was like a little bride and groom Pound Puppy set still in the box, like they are still in the box. So I was super excited about that. Like, I have to have it. So yeah, that's. And then Justin makes fun of me, like, oh, now you're on to something else. Okay.
Bex Scott: [00:25:24] Make more room in the house. I have another collection.
Kelli Szurek: [00:25:27] It's like, where are you going to put this? I'm like my grandma always said, if you want it, you'll find a spot for it.
Bex Scott: [00:25:32] That's very true. Yeah. So where would you say Pyrex collecting is headed? Do you think there's going to be crazy prices, a lack of available dishes? What are your thoughts on that?
Kelli Szurek: [00:25:48] Well, I do feel like as time goes on, right, they don't make Pyrex like this anymore so it's definitely going to get harder to find if people stop collecting it. You know, pricing, I always get a little frustrated with people online when somebody will post something for sale and people will comment like, this is a ridiculous price. I feel like things are worth what people are willing to pay for them. As somebody who has a very large Pyrex collection, I still want it to be worth something, you know, 50 years down the road. So I am hopeful that people will continue to collect, and I do want the price to stay high. So, you know, I want to find things for a steal. And I think that's what is really exciting about collecting some kind of antique item is it's, the hunt is fun, the hunt is part of the high, right? So I hope it continues. But I do see in my community a lot of young people, I also read, so I'll buy things in auction lots a lot, and I'll be going for one piece, but it comes in like this huge lot of other Pyrex or other stuff, and I'll resell that. And it is a lot of younger girls that are buying it because they're like, my grandma had this, I have to have it.
Kelli Szurek: [00:27:15] And so that does make me super happy that people still have that in them. And I do think like, I don't know about this generation, but there is a generation younger than me that is into like vintage stuff. And now people are into like, don't throw stuff into the landfill, like let's reuse, let's recycle, let's... so that's inspiring that hopefully people will continue thinking that way. Save the planet, don't buy new stuff. Use the old stuff. So I don't know where it's going to go, but I don't see it slowing down right now. In my experience, since 2020, it's only been three years, but I haven't seen it slowing down at all. And even like, I'll even look at some auction websites and just to see, like, what stuff's still going for, what are people still bidding at? And yeah, it's not slowing, it's not slowing down. I always think, oh, maybe as a reseller, I don't claim to just be a reseller, but if I have extra stuff or stuff that I got that I wasn't going for, I'll try to resell it and I'll go on those auction sites sometimes and think like, oh, maybe I can find something super cheap and resell it. But I mean, I feel like it's going for what it's worth. So.
Bex Scott: [00:28:36] Yeah, I agree, I'd like to see it continue and the younger generation get more into it. And I remember when I first started collecting, looking online for articles about Pyrex and it was mostly people, well, not mostly, but a lot of people getting angry about how there was a huge influx of collectors and resellers during the pandemic, and it was pushing prices up like crazy, and people were worried about where it was headed. But I think it's good if they're collecting it for the right reasons, and they love the dishes and they're going to pass them on to people and keep it going, I think that's awesome.
Kelli Szurek: [00:29:13] Right. If we have been spending this much money on it and it's at its highest cost or whatever, then you never want anything to go down in value after you've invested in it.
Bex Scott: [00:29:25] Mhm.
Kelli Szurek: [00:29:26] We'll see. We'll see what happens. I mean I don't see it going anywhere. People are still, people are still buying it. So it's good.
Bex Scott: [00:29:33] Mhm.
Kelli Szurek: [00:29:34] But I'm to the point now where you know, Justin will be like, we'll be at an antique store and he'll be like oh did you go over there, they have a room full of Pyrex. And I'm like, and he's like, do you have all of that? I'm like, maybe.
Bex Scott: [00:29:47] I might.
Kelli Szurek: [00:29:49] That is the point where I'm really just treasure hunting, you know, the more rare things. So it's, I definitely haven't been spending as much money because I never stumble across those right pieces unless I'm ready to pay what they're worth. And I don't want to do that.
Bex Scott: [00:30:07] And when I first started, I wasn't keeping track of what I was spending on it. So I'd hate to go back and calculate that because it would be a huge amount, because I was buying anything and everything I came across, and I had bajillions of duplicates, and I was trying to finish every pattern and I didn't get very far. But now I'm kind of, I've stuck to, I have my primary dishes and sets that I really love and then pink and turquoise. And now, like you, I'm going for the harder to find more rare pieces and selling off my extras to be able to pay for the more expensive ones.
Kelli Szurek: [00:30:48] Yes. Yeah, I do that too. Like if I resell anything on Facebook Marketplace, I'm like, okay, well, I'm going to take that money and put it towards this thing that I really, you know, this piece that I really want or kind of just set that aside, like, okay, well if I'm reinvesting then it doesn't seem as bad, right?
Bex Scott: [00:31:04] Yeah, exactly. And you mentioned that you're working on a Pyrex tattoo.
Kelli Szurek: [00:31:11] Oh yeah. So I love tattoos and I have been wanting a tattoo for a long time, but it was like, what do you pick, right? Like you can't have every single bowl tattooed on your body. And trying to narrow it down, and so I initially was going to be like, okay, I'm going to get a tattoo of the Cinderella Spring Blossom. It was what hooked me. So it's, you know, that's a really important piece to me. It has a lot of meaning and significance. And then I was, Justin was asking me because I'm like, I'm really going to try to come up with this idea, he's like, why don't you make your set of four of your favorites? I'm like, oh, that's a good idea, because then, I'm like, but still like, how do you pick four? That's even hard. So I'm still trying to figure that out, but my goal is to have it done in January.
Bex Scott: [00:32:05] I'm excited to see the finished product. That'll be awesome.
Kelli Szurek: [00:32:10] Me too! We'll see what it looks like.
Bex Scott: [00:32:12] Oh very cool. Well, I thought we would finish off with a bit of a game of underrated or overrated. So different patterns and dishes. So what are your thoughts on the Starburst Casserole? Underrated or overrated?
Kelli Szurek: [00:32:28] I think it's appropriately rated. It is the next big piece on my agenda to have. So I mean I guess I would say it's overrated. Don't buy it so I can.
Bex Scott: [00:32:44] That's an awesome answer.
Kelli Szurek: [00:32:45] Nobody needs that. Nobody needs that. Don't buy it. Leave it on the shelf for me.
Bex Scott: [00:32:50] I always see those posts come up when there's people who have like 7 or 8 of them at home and I'm like, how do you do that? I have never found one. I could use 1 or 2 of those. What about the Duchess?
Kelli Szurek: [00:33:09] Gosh, I don't even know what that is.
Bex Scott: [00:33:10] It's the the pink one with the little flowers. I think they're, it comes with the, there's a Libby glass set that goes with it and a carafe. That one's my holy grail.
Kelli Szurek: [00:33:21] Is it? Okay, I'm going to have to Google it because I honestly, see, you know more than I do. I don't even know what that is.
Bex Scott: [00:33:28] It's amazing.
Kelli Szurek: [00:33:28] Underrated because I don't know.
Bex Scott: [00:33:33] How about the primary set.
Kelli Szurek: [00:33:35] What is this girl doing on this podcast?
Bex Scott: [00:33:39] Nah.
Kelli Szurek: [00:33:40] The primary set? You know, I think it's underrated because it was like the first bright color piece ever to come out. It's such a staple to me. So I think it's underrated because people don't realize like how great it is. It's what started this madness.
Bex Scott: [00:33:57] Yeah, I agree, I'd say underrated as well. And the Opals?
Kelli Szurek: [00:34:02] The true Opals, I think that they're underrated. I have never seen true Opal. And I think that what's tricky about it is that it's hard to tell unless you, like, know certain things to look for. Sometimes it can, people will advertise that they have white Opal and it's, you know, another bowl with all the paint taken off of it. So it's tricky. So I think it's underrated.
Bex Scott: [00:34:30] I agree.
Kelli Szurek: [00:34:31] What about you? Do you have some?
Bex Scott: [00:34:32] No I wish. I always see the the Butter print with nothing on it at the store. And I get really excited. And then I walk up and, nope.
Kelli Szurek: [00:34:44] Yeah.
Bex Scott: [00:34:45] Mm hmm. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Kelli, for joining me today. It was great chatting with somebody who who loves Pyrex just as much as me. And I think now I'll probably have to get into the Fire-King and Hazel Atlas. And to get your advice.
Kelli Szurek: [00:35:04] It's another expensive rabbit hole. So.
Bex Scott: [00:35:07] It is.
Kelli Szurek: [00:35:08] But you know, it's fun. It's fun. I was going to say, too, I wanted to mention this on your on your podcast, but one of the things I get really excited about and all my friends make fun of me is if we go to a movie or watching TV and I see like Pyrex in the background because, you know.
Bex Scott: [00:35:22] Oh yeah.
Kelli Szurek: [00:35:22] Did you see they came out with Dear God, it's me, Margaret. And that takes place in like, the 70s. And so there was so much Pyrex and like, oh my gosh, do you see the Pyrex? Do you see the vintage? Like, look at their living room. It looks so amazing. And they're like, oh my God Kelli, no one cares.
Bex Scott: [00:35:40] I love watching shows on TV. I think there was an episode of Young Sheldon my son was watching, and I was standing there and pointing out all the Pyrex. He's like, oh, I'm trying to watch the show.
Kelli Szurek: [00:35:51] Right? It's just like so alluring when you see it. It's like, oh my gosh, did I just see that? I hope they go back to it because sometimes it'll be like a quick flip. I'm like, oh, rewind it. We have to go back and see what that was. Or Justin will be like, oh, I watched this girl on TikTok and she bakes and she uses her Pyrex. She's using, like, you know, green dot bowl. I'm like, why would you use that in your kitchen?
Bex Scott: [00:36:13] Don't break.
Kelli Szurek: [00:36:13] It. Don't put it in the dishwasher.
Bex Scott: [00:36:16] So yeah, there's some really cool sites where you can look up dishes and there's a whole list of different shows that they've been on and where you can buy them. So that's something fun to do. I found a set of Denby dishes at Value Village the other day, and I looked them up and it said that they were all on The Brady Bunch. And I used to love The Brady Bunch. Yeah, it's kind of a neat thing to look up.
Bex Scott: [00:36:45] Awesome. Well, thanks so much, Kelli.
Kelli Szurek: [00:36:47] Yes. You're welcome. And I'm excited to listen to all your episodes as they start coming out. It's exciting.
Bex Scott: [00:00:31] Hey, everybody, this is Bex Scott, and you're listening to the Pyrex with Bex podcast. Thanks so much for tuning in. So today I thought I would talk a little bit about garage sales, and I know that garage sales are not for everyone, but I've always loved them. And sadly, garage sale season is fully over here in Canada. We're located where it's starting to get rainy and a little bit chilly, and really not a lot of people, unless you're super brave, are deciding to have garage sales anymore. And I'm always jealous when I hear of people in the States or the warmer climates that can have a garage sale all year round. And this is something that I never really thought about before, but they can have a garage sale any weekend they want as long as the weather cooperates. And we definitely can't do that with all of the snow and the cold weather that we get here. So growing up, my parents would frequently have garage sales on the weekends. We'd set up our clothes and toys and get up super early because we were so excited. And I remember putting out my toys, people coming up and saying, oh, could I buy this? Can you give me change? And it just being a really great memory and then at the end, counting all our money and looking back at all the hard work that we put into these sales to come out with, I don't even know how much, an extra $30 or $40 as a kid, which was really fun.
Bex Scott: [00:01:54] So as I grew up, it changed into me going to other people's garage sales with my mom. We would look through the newspaper every week and circle the ones that were close to us, and pack up the car and go driving around to find these sales. And at that time, it was mostly me buying toys and Barbies and Polly Pockets and all of that kind of fun stuff as a young girl. And the tables really turned now with what I'm looking for as a vintage collector and a reseller. We live just outside of a small town in Alberta, where the population is around 8000 people. So it's not the smallest, but it is a lot smaller than what I came from growing up as a city girl. So I would say that a decent portion of the population is older here, and I did manage to make it out to some garage sales this summer. It was our first summer here, so trying to get a little bit of a lay of the land and see what the town is like, and it really didn't disappoint in terms of what is able to pick up and also some of the stories that I came out of these sales with.
Bex Scott: [00:03:04] So the first sale that I went to, and I try to take our oldest son with me when I go, he's 13 and he loves garage sales. He doesn't necessarily love vintage, but he does love coming with me and tagging along and seeing what we can find. So the first sale we went to was a mother/daughter sale. Both of them were selling off a whole bunch of vintage items that I'm sure were her parents'. Everything was priced really well and I have to give it to them, because when you walked in, you saw this legend with all these color coded sticky dots, and the dots corresponded with the items that they were selling, which worked really well. And I don't think there was anything that was over $5. So this was super ideal for a garage sale. So we're walking around and the first thing that my son sees is this super old vintage mop and broom set. And we have a young daughter as well, and he was hell bent on buying this set so that we could teach her how to clean. So that was the first item we got, and I guess coming up will be once she's old enough, she'll be learning how to clean the house with this little vintage set.
Bex Scott: [00:04:14] Next up, I don't know why, but I always seem to find lasagna pans. They're attracted to me for some reason. So I found a Verdi 933 lasagna pan for $3, and something that I thought was that I keep finding, I guess, out in the wild and at these sales is that people will use their Pyrex, but they won't clean them. I don't know if it's that they don't know how to properly clean them, or that they're just too lazy. I'm not sure, but a huge majority of these casserole dishes that I find have baked on grease, have markings from where the tin foil was resting on them, and they're put out for sale at super low prices. And I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that they think that they can't be fixed. So I love grabbing these dishes and using oven cleaner and peak to really give them a new life and to clean them up, and most of them end up looking brand new in the end. Things that I found were probably my favorite at this garage sale, and if you know me, you know that I love Christmas, so I found some awesome vintage Christmas items. The first one was called a Bubbling Electric Christmas Lamp, and a bunch of you will probably remember the little bubbling candlesticks that you could get for your tree that you just screwed into the light bulb base, and there's liquid in them, and the bubbles went up and down.
Bex Scott: [00:05:45] And this is an actual lamp that has one of them in it. It looks like one of the vintage oil lamps, but there's a little bubbling Christmas light inside, and it has holly berries in the bottom and a nice gold stand. So I thought that was pretty cool, because I remember having the bubbling lights on our tree and being a little kid and touching them and remembering them being really warm when you touch them and thinking, now, thinking back on that, I'm sure these ones were fine to put on the tree. But I've come across a lot of vintage Christmas lights that were wrapped in paper or had little paper lanterns, or were definitely now probably considered a huge fire hazard, but really beautifully designed and just pretty for trees and decorating. The next thing I found was an Alpine Village set of little lights on a string by Universal Lights, and it says, contains a set of ten miniature lights with eight cottages and a cathedral. And these are super cute. They're red, yellow, green, blue and white, and I'm really looking forward to setting them up this Christmas.
Bex Scott: [00:06:59] Okay, so next we went to another sale. Now this one I had reservations about going to. It was one of those sales that when you look up online, this one was on marketplace, and the pictures show a massive amount of could be junk, could be really great treasures, but either way, we went to it and we pulled up and we walked into the back and there was this massive detached garage, and they opened up the garage door and it was stuffed full to the brim from floor to ceiling, with what looked like could have been a liquidated antique store or just collections of things from over the years. And we looked around a little bit. There was a little old man that lived there. He came out and he started following us around. We went to the back of the garage sale, where they had a bunch of china cabinets set up, and the man came over, and this was really funny, he starts telling my son that he should be buying some of these super ancient looking rum bottles and booze bottles. And our son was looking at me like, what do I do? I don't know what to do. I don't need these bottles. But this man was convinced that they were meant for him and that he would really love to have them in his collection. Next up, I ended up getting myself into the world's most awkward price conversation, and it was over a lamp that I didn't necessarily even need. It was an old gold painted lamp with glass shades. Nothing too exciting, but I was thinking of maybe putting it in my daughter's room. So he pulls it off the shelf and there's a little sticky price tag on it that says $15. And he looks at me and he says, well, that was priced years ago, so make me an offer.
Bex Scott: [00:08:45] So I'm standing there thinking that he meant that it was so long ago that the price didn't make sense anymore, and that I could go lower because it really wasn't anything special. So I - side note, I hate negotiating, I'm the world's most passive person and talking about money makes me so uncomfortable - so I'm standing there fidgeting, holding my breath and I say, okay, $10. And he looks at me like he was the most offended he's ever been and says, this is very old, very old, you can't give me just $10. So then I panic and go the other way and I say $30. He still wasn't happy. So I tried backtracking and at this point I don't know what I'm doing. So I said to him, please suggest me a price. And this whole time his lovely wife was listening in and standing there drinking her coffee, obviously thinking this was hilarious and entertaining for her, and she says something to him and ends up just giving me the lamp for $15, which was on the sticker to begin with. But at this point, I want to get out of there because I'm uncomfortable. I feel bad for low balling him. And so he takes the lamp from me and he says, no, no, no, you have to go in. You have to keep looking. So we go back into the garage and I end up going into where the china cabinets were again, because his wife said there might be some Pyrex back there.
Bex Scott: [00:10:19] Realizing that there wasn't, we turn around and he's there, standing, blocking the only exit out of this garage and pointing at things, just saying how old and nice they were, how we should take them. And I'm starting to panic because we can't get out and he's not making any move to leave. I think me and my son, we ended up standing there for a good, awkward five minutes until he decided to move on and find something else in the garage or go talk to somebody else. But I'm obviously not capable of going to garage sales without adult supervision because this one, I have to say, was a little bit stressful. But that didn't stop us from going to a few more that day. Our next stop was at an elderly couple's house where it looked like they were downsizing. This sale, I have to say, started off strong. We walked in and right as we started looking around, everyone in the garage stopped and someone brought out a birthday cake with lit candles. So we're standing there awkward and everybody starts singing around us, so we decide the only thing we can do is to join in. We start singing Happy Birthday to a random man in this garage, and it ended up being kind of the highlight of our day. But moving on to some of the things that we found there, I wanted to bring up this set of bowls that I found because, as you know, I'm a Pyrex lover, but I found a set of Hazel-Atlas bowls that were pretty cool.
Bex Scott: [00:11:49] So if you haven't heard of Hazel-Atlas spaghetti string bowls, now, I don't know if that's the correct term for them, but this is what I found when I googled them. These bowls were four little serving bowls and a large salad bowl, and the ones that I found were white milk glass with a yellow gold spaghetti string design, which I believe is called Hazel-Atlas spaghetti string butterscotch. And it looked like someone had taken paint and drizzled it all over the bowls. And the best part was the woman comes over and she looks at me and she says, I was given these bowls for my wedding 60 years ago, and they've never seen the light of day. And this is what makes garage saleing so fun, is that you actually get the back stories from people on who gave them these items, why they have them, why they're getting rid of them. And that makes it even more special when you add them to your collection. So to finish off, I thought I would tell you a little bit about the garage sale that I decided to have over the summer.
Bex Scott: [00:12:54] So during the pandemic, I had gone a little bit crazy with my collecting, and I ended up with around 60 banker's boxes of vintage items. And these items started with me at a whole other house. I started collecting, and they just kept adding up and adding up and I was making sales, so that's great. But at this point, my Poshmark and my Marketplace sales had slowed down, and I was honestly tired of seeing it hanging around, and some of these items were things that I had thought would sell and hadn't yet. And a large portion of it was actually Pyrex. Pyrex dishes that I started collecting, thought I was going to continue with that pattern, and then kind of went on to the next one and abandoned it. So I had a ton of vintage Pyrex. I had mugs, figurines, a whole bunch of brass. I think I should do a whole episode on brass, because my husband hates it so much that I try to keep it out of the house. The other day I was listing a whole bunch of things in the basement, and he came across this box of brass. It was actually a cereal box that I had stuffed all the brass into, and he was like, what is this, I thought you got rid of these. I started to panic a little bit. Don't worry, I'm going to sell them. They're going. They're leaving the house. Don't worry. Anyway, so I decided to have this garage sale and we live out in the country so I had it in the city at my parents house, and I was a little bit nervous about it because I had so many items and I didn't want to sell them too low, but I didn't want to go too high, so pricing them was an issue.
Bex Scott: [00:14:36] We spent probably a good five hours the night before unboxing everything, setting it up, trying to put stickers on things. I even attempted to do the color coordinated dot, but I had so many items that I ended up pricing maybe a quarter of them, and then leaving the rest and just hoping I would price them throughout the day or that people would ask me how much things cost, and then I would just kind of negotiate with them from there. Little did I know, that was a mistake. And now looking back on it, I think that was a no-no of garage sailing etiquette. So I set this garage sale to start at 9:00. And I didn't know that people lined up for hours before to get into these sales first. So I'm looking out the window, and my parents are like, there's a guy sitting out there in his car. So I start panicking. Do I let him in? Do I not let him in? I think at the end of the day, I ended up letting him in a few minutes early. But I go out there and I open the garage sale, and this guy gets out of his car and he's making a big production of stretching, and he's yawning and groaning. I'm like, oh, great, here we go, this is my first customer and it's already not going well.
Bex Scott: [00:15:55] So he walks up and he says, I was beginning to think this was the wrong house. Well, I had it set for 9:00 and he just walked by. I said good morning and he kind of just huffed past me. So he starts looking around. And he's asking me what prices are. He said there's no price tags on these things. I said, yeah, I know I haven't gotten around to all of it yet, but feel free to ask me if you're curious about something and I'll let you know. So he's going around and instantly you can tell he's a reseller. He's looking at the Pyrex, he has his phone out, he's googling things, so he asks me how much for this, like mint condition set of spring blossom Pyrex dishes. And I think I ended up saying, both of these are $35. And at this point, somebody else had come into the garage and it was one of his friends or a reseller that he knew. And he looked at this guy and he said, well, I guess that's why it's called a vintage sale. And at this point I'm panicking because I'm obviously messing up the garage sale already, don't know what to do. So he looks at me and says, how much would you want for everything here? And in the back of my mind I had kind of thought of a number already in case this had happened. I didn't think he was, I don't think he was being serious, but he said, throw out a number. So I said, well, for everything I would want $2,000. And he looks at me and says, well, that would be all the money I had for the whole day and walks out.
Bex Scott: [00:17:36] And so I felt like I had started off my garage sale on a strong note, and it was quickly becoming something that I was not familiar with, and I felt like I was a little bit in over my head. So as the day progressed, things got a little better. I realized that I needed to put stickers on things. I needed to lower the prices and just hope for the best. So another big portion of the garage sale items that I had were CorningWare casseroles. And I found it really funny because I tried to price these relatively low to get rid of them. I don't collect CorningWare, but I found a lot of success over the years in reselling it, and there are some pieces that go for a lot more than others like the brownie pans, the pie plates, the little petites with the plastic lids. Those are the more sought after pieces and not so much the everyday casserole dishes. So I had a bunch of just the run of the mill casseroles in my sale, some of the teapots, and I remember people coming in and saying, oh, you're selling these for like $1 to $5, that's way too cheap, these things are worth a ton of money. And then kind of giggling to myself, because the person before them had told me that I had priced them way too high in that same price range, and that I wouldn't sell any of them.
Bex Scott: [00:19:06] So it's funny how different people perceive things to have different values. And I know as a collector and somebody who buys off of eBay and Marketplace, that there's been a lot of conversations in groups around these CorningWare dishes that have been selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars, and there's been suspected money laundering happening through them. And this has kind of skewed people's perception and skewed people listing this CorningWare on these places for the proper price, so it could be your regular Spice of Life casserole, but it's being sold on eBay for $8,000, when really it's worth like $5 or $10. So it's just interesting that things like that are happening and that it's hard to price things to make everybody happy because you can't. So you have to go in with the best price for you and what you believe to be the best price for things.
Bex Scott: [00:20:06] And to wrap up, I thought I would go over a few of the other funny things that I experienced in my garage sale. So in the end, we ended up having about 4 or 5 weekends of garage sales because I had so many items to get rid of and we were doing quite well with them. And some of the highlights of my garage sales were definitely people complaining about prices being too high or too low. One man came in and told me that he was very upset because I didn't have any items for men. Another woman told me that she goes to many, many garage sales and that my items probably wouldn't sell. I had some really old vintage squeaker toys and they were both for a dollar, and somebody asked me if they could have them for $0.25 because all they were going to was his dog as a chew toy. And this kind of just made the whole experience a little bit more fun in the end, because I got to look back and think of all of the funny things that I came across, all the funny things that were said to me, and I would say garage sales are definitely not for the faint of heart. But if you are up for putting in the effort and taking the time, it is really fun because you do get the experience of meeting people and making connections and just having some fun while you're at it. I did come across a bunch of awesome other resellers that came to my sale, and we've connected since then. And my final story is, I remember one lady telling me that she got the full pumpkin set of butterprint Cinderella dishes for $65 at a garage sale. And that right there is my dream. So garage sales will always be near and dear to my heart, and I'll always keep going to them.
Bex Scott: [00:00:02] Hey everybody, it's Bex Scott and welcome to the Pyrex With Bex podcast, where, you guessed it, I talk about vintage Pyrex, but also all things vintage housewares. I'll take you on my latest thrifting adventures, talk about reselling, chat with other enthusiasts about their collections, and learn about a bunch of really awesome items from the past. Subscribe now on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you love listening to podcasts so you don't miss a beat.
Bex Scott: [00:00:30] Hey everyone, this is Bex Scott and you're listening to the Pyrex with Bex podcast. In today's episode, I'm joined by Danielle, the Mid-Century Maximalists on Instagram. We chat about why she started collecting Pyrex and vintage, her awesome ceramic collection, and what it's like being a vintage lover. Okay, so hey everyone, I'm super excited for today's episode because I'm here with my very first guest and I'd like to welcome Danielle to the show. Thanks so much for being here.
Danielle: [00:00:58] Thanks for having me.
Bex Scott: [00:00:59] And you can find Danielle on Instagram at the Mid-Century Maximalists. And it was actually on Instagram that we met. And I was impressed right away by your amazing Pyrex collection. And then I read your first post all about why you started collecting and why it's so important to you. And I'd love to start off with that story here today.
Danielle: [00:01:20] So my entire life I've always been a bit eclectic, and I spent a lot of my childhood at my grandmother's house. Wasn't one that wanted to just go out and party or anything like that. I just loved spending time with my grandmother, and her entire house was decked out in 70s garb, a lot of Merry Mushroom, a lot of Pyrex that has been handed down. And so it's things that I was familiar with my entire childhood. And then about three years ago, I lost my grandparents within two weeks of each other due to Covid. And since then, it's just kind of spiraled, collecting things that remind me of them because it makes me feel close to them. So it's been a hobby that kind of hit me out of nowhere, but it's fun.
Bex Scott: [00:02:12] Definitely. And I love stories like that, where it's more than just going out and finding things that you like. It's some kind of memory that's brought up when you find things or when they're passed down to you, and it's a great way to keep people in your life, even after they're not with us anymore. And that's kind of similar to my story. I got into it because of my grandparents, but it was more that we were cleaning out my granny and grandpa's garage, and we found some of my great aunt's Pyrex in a Rubbermaid bin. And that's kind of what set things off for me. And it spiraled into an addiction as well.
Danielle: [00:02:50] What pattern was it?
Bex Scott: [00:02:52] It wasn't anything super exciting. It was the lime green lasagna pan. And then I had some primary bowls. But after I found the primary bowls, that was my very first pattern or set that I collected. And I think I ended up with about 5 or 6 full primary sets. Way too many. You don't need that many ever. But I ended up selling them eventually, and I think I kept two and then a reverse primary. So I have those ones still. But yeah, it's easy to get swept up in it.
Danielle: [00:03:24] It really is. Every antique store you go to.
Bex Scott: [00:03:28] Yeah. Yeah.
Danielle: [00:03:29] It's the thrill of the hunt, though.
Bex Scott: [00:03:31] It is. It's a huge adrenaline rush. And then you have huge boxes and piles, and - at least I do. I have, I think, 60 banker's boxes of vintage items in my basement. Now that's become me having to resell things because I have so much. But it's fun, so it keeps me going.
Danielle: [00:03:53] Yeah, I wish I had a basement so that I could hoard some more things, but I unfortunately live in a ranch so I don't have that much for like room for storage. So whenever I cycle things out, I have to purge.
Bex Scott: [00:04:09] That's probably a good thing. That's what my husband would prefer, I think, because he's the one who helps me pack everything to ship and then pack it away in the basement, and he's a very patient man. Thank goodness.
Danielle: [00:04:22] We love to hear it.
Bex Scott: [00:04:23] Yeah. So do you have a specific pattern of Pyrex that was passed down to you that you really love?
Danielle: [00:04:31] So my family, I live in Georgia, but my family is originally from Pennsylvania and up there it was really prominent to have Pyrex, so there was a lot of patterns. And predominantly my favorite one that I've gotten is the Friendship pattern, but I've inherited the Friendship, there's several primary sets, there's the Amish Butterprint. There's quite a few that are within my family line. In fact, my mother still uses what she was gifted as a wedding present almost daily. She has this really neat, it's a complete yellow set, and I've been searching for one as I thrift because she won't give it to me. But she has that. And then she has this really cool casserole dish that's like a hunter green, and it has gold detailing on it. So there's quite a bit of Pyrex that I have inherited. My partner actually inherited the Sunflower pattern, so we have that too. So a lot of what we have on display in our cabinets at home are things that we inherited because of how sentimental they are to us.
Bex Scott: [00:05:56] That's awesome. And do you guys use them every day as well, or do you display them and keep them there?
Danielle: [00:06:02] We don't use the ones that were handed down, but we do use ones we have thrifted and antiqued simply because while they may look the same, it doesn't hold the same sentimental value. So we keep those put up safe. We've got a zoo of animals. You'll probably see a cat or two pop in here at some point. So because of that, we like to keep those types of things safe and away from the animals.
Bex Scott: [00:06:34] That's a good idea. My cat has definitely knocked a few knickknacks off of tables and desks before, so it's a dangerous hobby when you have pets.
Danielle: [00:06:47] Yeah, and we've got three large breed rescues.
Bex Scott: [00:06:51] Oh, wow.
Danielle: [00:06:53] A pit/boxer, a lab/hound, and a husky. So they're not well behaved.
Bex Scott: [00:07:02] That's okay. They sound very cute.
Danielle: [00:07:08] They are.
Bex Scott: [00:07:09] Nice. Most of my collection I keep in china cabinets, and then we ended up using the Homestead pattern as our daily Pyrex dishes. So all of those ones, I find that they wash really well, and they just go with pretty much everything in our house. So that ended up being something that we use and my husband likes them.
Danielle: [00:07:33] So we use the Corelle dish set, the ones that kind of match all a lot of the Pyrex patterns. So we use those as our everyday dishes, which is fun. That and I've also got my grandmother's, they're the cubist glasses, Indiana glass.
Bex Scott: [00:07:53] Okay.
Danielle: [00:07:53] I can't think of the name of them, but I've got her set, so we use those as our drinking glasses.
Bex Scott: [00:07:59] Nice. I've always wanted to incorporate some vintage glasses or barware into our kitchen, but we have three kids and they're pretty young still, so right now it would be too dangerous, I think.
Danielle: [00:08:14] Yeah, we're lucky enough, I guess lucky enough, that we don't have kids yet, so we can dabble in all that type of stuff. Once we have kids, I will have to be a bit more careful with where I place certain things, because I have a lot of ceramics that have been handed down to me, and if a kid hurts them, I will cry.
Bex Scott: [00:08:35] Oh, I think I would too. Yeah. And those are the ceramics that, was it your grandmother that made them?
Danielle: [00:08:44] My great grandmother and my grandmother.
Bex Scott: [00:08:46] Okay. And what kind of ceramics are they?
Danielle: [00:08:50] Oh, I've got some for every holiday. So right now I've got a little village out that has a tree with a vulture on it, and kids trick or treating, a ghost popping out of a casket, a little graveyard. It's super neat. Then I've also got a ceramic pumpkin that she, my grandmother, painted, made and painted, so that's pretty cool. And then I have a couple different ghost ceramics, a black cat ceramic, a house that's very similar to the village, but it's set up inside of a house. Things that I've never seen other people have, which is pretty cool. I've also got a turkey and a pilgrim and an Indian, which probably isn't kosher anymore, but my grandmother made them, so I hold on to them. And then for Christmas, I've got all sorts of things. But you name a holiday - Valentine's Day, Easter - I've got ceramics for it.
Bex Scott: [00:09:58] That's awesome. I would love to decorate my house for every season with ceramics like that, and I think I saw them in the little highlight on your Instagram story.
Danielle: [00:10:08] Those were the ones that I most recently was able to convince my mother to let me steal. Yeah, that's the little graveyard and the house. I've never seen anybody else have anything like that. So they're super special to me because I can remember just being little and thinking they were the neatest things and playing with them and then getting yelled at for playing with them. Rightfully so. So, yeah.
Bex Scott: [00:10:37] Yeah, I think I crushed some little reindeer figurines that my granny had when I was little, and my dad always brings it up when we're at family functions. And he reminds me that he told me just for looking, not for touching. And then I took them in my hand and I squished them. And so...
Danielle: [00:11:00] Oh boy.
Bex Scott: [00:11:00] Hopefully my kids don't do that with any of, I have a whole bunch of little bluebirds that I collect because my great grandma collected those as well. So I have to make sure the kids stay away from those.
Danielle: [00:11:12] Keep them up high.
Bex Scott: [00:11:13] Yeah. So what's the thrifting like where you live? Is it pretty good, or...?
Danielle: [00:11:21] I'm right outside of Atlanta. So unfortunately the market's kind of like saturated around here. It just doesn't seem like as many antiques. There wasn't as much Pyrex down here. There wasn't a whole lot of ceramics down here. So you do, like, bump into those things from time to time. But that just doesn't seem to be what people's ancestors down here had. So anything that is down here pretty much migrated with someone from the North. I find that when we travel, we have better luck. We went to Louisville to visit my partner's uncle and I found a ceramic wall hanging Christmas tree, and I was really pumped about that, like found it at Goodwill. That type of stuff does not happen down here. Unfortunately, our Goodwills are dumbly overpriced, like 20 bucks for a pair of pants and they're picked over and they're just not that great here. But we've got family all over, so we've got to travel quite a few times throughout the year. So we hit those places up. So like Florida and Pennsylvania and Ohio and Kentucky, just not, it's just not booming around here. I guess maybe too many resellers.
Bex Scott: [00:12:43] Yeah, that's like my area as well. Everybody seems to be getting into reselling and collecting. And I'm in a small town between two large cities, and there's a nice little pocket of Salvation Army and a few other Value Village stores that are really nice for finding things. But the further out you get, the harder it is to find good deals, like you said, and especially with Pyrex, the price seems to be going up where they'll have a dishwasher damaged bowl for $20. And it's just, it's kind of ridiculous and it makes it not as fun in that sense. You have to start looking online for things that you want to add to your collection, but that's okay. It's all part of it.
Danielle: [00:13:28] Yeah. I mean, I still enjoy the hunt. I still go to the antique stores. I've paid some stupid prices for things that I just wanted.
Bex Scott: [00:13:37] Yeah. Me too.
Danielle: [00:13:38] You don't see them every day, so, like, you know what?
Bex Scott: [00:13:42] Yeah, it's worth it at that point.
Danielle: [00:13:43] I'll take it. But whenever I try and purge things around here, like, I don't try and do that. Like, I'm not in it for the money. I just want to kind of get out maybe what I put into it or part of what I put into it. So I don't full blown re, like I wouldn't call myself a reseller. I just have to purge from time to time because I can't hoard everything. I know that I'm a maximalist, but, at some point...
Bex Scott: [00:14:14] Yeah. What's the best piece of Pyrex you found thrifting? If there is one that you can think of.
Danielle: [00:14:22] At an actual thrift store, I don't think I've ever actually found Pyrex, at least none that wasn't dishwasher damage, because I find, I find that kind of stuff all the time. I did find a pretty neat Corelle dish thrifting one time, but as far as like antiquing goes, the coolest one that I found, I'm trying to think, I've got several unique pieces, that I think the Pueblo pattern is the coolest one I've found out and about. It's probably my favorite piece in there.
Bex Scott: [00:14:57] Yeah, that one's beautiful. And then I noticed you have the Kim Chee as well.
Danielle: [00:15:03] I do have the Kim Chee.
Bex Scott: [00:15:04] And then the Navajo.
Danielle: [00:15:06] So the Navajo, fun story, we pretty much were given that one when we were in Ohio by someone we met. It was their grandmother's, and they made us swear up and down that we were gonna take care of it. Like absolutely! Brand new. Never used. And I was like, of course I will take care of this. It's in good hands. So I was pretty pumped about that one.
Bex Scott: [00:15:32] Those are definitely ones that you would never find out in the wild here. That would be, maybe not even in an antique store. I don't think I've ever found any of those patterns.
Danielle: [00:15:43] All three of those come from Ohio.
Bex Scott: [00:15:46] Okay, I need to go to Ohio.
Danielle: [00:15:50] My partner's father lives up there, and every single time we go up we make him take us to all of the antique stores. And he moans and groans while we have the time of our lives. Um, but good prices on them, too. The Pueblo we paid like 40 bucks for, it's pristine, was definitely never used. So we typically have really good luck when we go up there. So definitely hit up Ohio sometime.
Bex Scott: [00:16:20] Yeah, I've never been. It's on my list now. We went to Portland, Maine just this past summer, and my aunt took me around to a bunch of different shops, and there was one, I still have regrets that I didn't buy way more at the store, but they had a whole bunch of the Pyrex Christmas mugs that were given to staff every year as gifts. And I only bought one, and this one mug was $54 US, which was way more because of the Canadian dollar. Our dollar is terrible right now, but I should have bought all five of them and I still have nightmares about it.
Danielle: [00:17:05] Yeah, we have a pretty unique one that must have been only in-house, like Pyrex only gave it to their employees, but it has like beakers across it and it says it says Pyrex on one side, and then it says Corning on the other, which I thought was pretty cool.
Bex Scott: [00:17:27] That is cool. I don't think I've ever seen that.
Danielle: [00:17:30] I'll have to message you a picture of it.
Bex Scott: [00:17:33] Yeah. That's awesome. Very cool. So do you have a specific style that you like to decorate your house in, or is it kind of just eclectic from the things that you've collected or...?
Danielle: [00:17:46] It's very 70s. So the room I'm sitting in right now, obviously I've got this old Afghan, um, but we have a record cabinet, lots of vintage records, and our main living room is painted like a 70s bright orange, and it's all 70s garb. So pretty much anything that my grandmother would have had in her house, we have here, minus a couple things, because there were some things, like the Ivy dishes, that just never tickled my fancy. But we love cross-stitch. We have it all over our walls. Love ceramics, obviously love stained glass, love Pyrex, love... You name it, we probably have it.
Bex Scott: [00:18:41] That's awesome. It sounds like I'd love your house.
Danielle: [00:18:45] You'll have to come out sometime.
Bex Scott: [00:18:49] My one room, my office that I'm in right now, is the one that I decorate. And the rest of the house is just... my husband doesn't have the same style as me, so we've kind of come to some kind of middle ground with decor. As long as I don't put brass in the house because he really doesn't like brass, which kills me because I keep finding some amazing brass pieces.
Danielle: [00:19:12] Luckily, my partner and I have the same style. We both really caught on to certain things because of our grandmothers. So I mean, we've, I see you've got the Merry Mushroom canisters behind you, but we use ours.
Bex Scott: [00:19:29] That's awesome.
Danielle: [00:19:32] A lot of the things that we do collect, we try and make functional. If we can. Not everything, like some of the Pyrex obviously we don't want to touch, but yeah.
Bex Scott: [00:19:49] If you had one, I guess, Pyrex pattern or dish and one just random vintage piece, what would you want? Like what's your unicorn or your holy grail piece of vintage? And then Pyrex?
Danielle: [00:20:05] I'm going to stick with my Friendship dishes simply because those were passed down through my family. Like there was other ones, but for some reason I'm just stuck on those Friendship ones. I can remember, like my grandmother having them, I can remember my great grandmother having them. So it's one of those things that that would definitely be my Pyrex dish. As far as things that are hanging on the wall, I'm trying to think because there's several good things. Oh, I know what my other one would be. My cast iron cat that my partner hates.
Bex Scott: [00:20:50] That's awesome.
Danielle: [00:20:54] Yeah, I have, um, I have old vintage ceramic and cast iron cats almost in every single room. And my partner says they're creepy.
Bex Scott: [00:21:05] Cats are great, and there's luckily a lot of vintage out there with cats.
Danielle: [00:21:10] I actually just found a mug this past weekend, not this past weekend, two weekends ago, and it's an old piece of pottery and it has like cats painted on it. And my mom was like, oh God, please, no. And I was like, how much? And they were like $0.50. And I was like, done.
Bex Scott: [00:21:28] Sold.
Danielle: [00:21:29] Um, so yeah, no, I definitely would need to keep one of my cast iron cats. But that was also one of the things that my family members always had them. I have a great aunt, in Pennsylvania, and she's got quite a few of them. And I hate to break it to my partner, but they're all coming here.
Bex Scott: [00:21:56] You can just start hiding things around the house. They'll just start appearing.
Danielle: [00:22:01] She's tried to create, like a one item per room rule, that I can only specifically pick one item because I try and pick the most eclectic things.
Bex Scott: [00:22:16] That makes it fun.
Danielle: [00:22:17] If there's if there's a Bigfoot statue, definitely putting that in my house. So my partner has her opinions, but sometimes I get the veto.
Bex Scott: [00:22:29] Yeah. And we have a running joke in the house right now. I have a horse cross stitch, it's huge, I don't know who made it, but it's in a massive wood frame and it keeps moving around our house. It started above our bed and then I think now it's above our toilet and I have no idea where it's going to end up next. But I have it listed for sale. But until it sells, we just keep moving it around because none of us like it. So.
Danielle: [00:22:59] That's hilarious.
Bex Scott: [00:23:03] Nice.
Danielle: [00:23:03] Is that the only cross that you have?
Bex Scott: [00:23:06] I have a ton of flowers and they're all listed for sale. I want to keep all of them because my goal was to make a big cross stitch, cruel needlepoint wall behind me at my desk here. But I have trouble committing to a certain style and a certain type of...
Danielle: [00:23:26] You just got to throw them up like, turn mine, like ours doesn't match.
Bex Scott: [00:23:34] Oh, that looks great. Yeah. I love that.
Danielle: [00:23:35] But that we find things and we just throw it on the wall.
Bex Scott: [00:23:39] Yeah. My hope is to find a mushroom needlepoint or cross stitch that will go with my theme that I have going on with the Merry Mushroom.
Danielle: [00:23:48] That would be really cool. You could make one.
Bex Scott: [00:23:51] That's true. I have to learn how to.
Danielle: [00:23:53] My partner cross stitches.
Bex Scott: [00:23:54] Oh, really?
Danielle: [00:23:56] She loves it.
Bex Scott: [00:23:58] Maybe she'll have to do one for me.
Danielle: [00:24:01] I mean she would. She also sews.
Bex Scott: [00:24:03] Oh, I'll hire her. She's hired.
Danielle: [00:24:06] She's a jack of all trades.
Bex Scott: [00:24:08] Nice. Yeah. I haven't gotten into the cross stitch yet, but I even have a bunch of kits that I could start. That might be my...
Danielle: [00:24:15] We have a bunch of kits, too.
Bex Scott: [00:24:19] Yeah, those ones are easy to collect as well.
Danielle: [00:24:22] They are. You find them out and about quite frequently. At least I do around here, because I guess people will clean out their grandparents houses and they think that nobody knows how to do that type of stuff anymore. But like, there's plenty of people that do. Plus, it's pretty easy to like pick up if you put your mind to it. If you don't have ADHD like me because I started one and just haven't gone back to it. But maybe one day.
Bex Scott: [00:24:56] It'll be there when you're ready.
Danielle: [00:24:59] Yeah, it's how most of my projects go. I get about halfway and then I'm like, on to the next one.
Bex Scott: [00:25:06] Yeah, next thing. Well, I picked up a bunch of Christmas cross stitch kits in an estate sale a couple of days ago, so maybe I'll do one for Christmas.
Danielle: [00:25:17] That'd be awesome. You could also crochet some snowflakes to put on your Christmas tree.
Bex Scott: [00:25:22] Yeah, I think I have some of those from my grandma. Those are nice.
Danielle: [00:25:27] My partner's been on the hunt for a pink Christmas tree.
Bex Scott: [00:25:31] Ooh, that would be amazing. Then would you do vintage decorations?
Danielle: [00:25:35] We already have vintage decorations on one of our trees. We have a white one and then just a regular one. And I think, I think last year we put the vintage on the white Christmas tree. I can't remember, but we do have like vintage shatterproof ornaments. I actually have a bunch of ornaments my great grandmother handmade, but I'm too afraid with all of the animals that they'll get broken and they're kind of not replaceable. Our cats like to climb the trees and eat the trees, so we haven't found a way to stop them. We've tried all sorts of things to get them out, but because of that, I just keep them away safe.
Bex Scott: [00:26:27] That's a good idea.
Danielle: [00:26:31] Have you noticed any of your kids getting into, like, collecting?
Bex Scott: [00:26:35] That's a good question. I've tried. My oldest son, he's 13, and he comes to Value Village and Goodwill and all the garage sales with me. He doesn't love anything vintage, really, but he likes coming and looking for things with me. And it's, I think it's the thrill of the hunt for him as well. And then when I go out and I come back home, he'll say, Oh, are those more bowls in that box, or Did you buy more bowls today? I definitely did, and then I threaten, we have a nine year old son as well, I threaten them that this will be their inheritance one day, that they're going to have all of these bowls and Pyrex bowls to give to whoever they want, and they can sell it if they want, but it's all coming to them. We have an 11 month old as well and I'm hoping that she'll be the one that kind of turns into the Pyrex vintage lover. So starting off early.
Danielle: [00:27:33] I'm sure. Yeah, I'm sure as they get older they'll get into it because it's something I never appreciated when I was younger. I was always like, why don't you, like, redo everything? Because this is kind of outdated.
Bex Scott: [00:27:47] Yeah, yeah. And then you end up falling in love with the vintage items, and then you reverse time and then you don't go with the new, updated, renovated house stuff. It's like a blast from the past, which I really like.
Danielle: [00:28:01] Yeah. My friends will come in the house and be like, whoa, these are some bright colors. And I'm like, you can go home to your agreeable gray walls anytime you want.
Bex Scott: [00:28:13] Yeah, go home and stare at your white walls.
Danielle: [00:28:18] Exactly. So, I mean, to each their own, I guess.
Bex Scott: [00:28:22] Exactly.
Danielle: [00:28:27] What's your favorite piece in your room?
Bex Scott: [00:28:30] Oh. Good question. I have a cabinet on my right here that's full of all my pink Pyrex and my pink Gooseberry. So I'd say probably the pink Gooseberry. And then I have the glasses that go with the Duchess set. I think they're the Libby glasses. The Duchess casserole is my number one need to find one day Pyrex dish, so I'm always on the lookout for that. I found it online, but it's so expensive.
Danielle: [00:29:02] Yeah, that one is rather expensive.
Bex Scott: [00:29:04] Yeah, yeah. So maybe, maybe one day when I win the lottery, that'll be my next big collectible.
Danielle: [00:29:15] When did you kind of get into collecting?
Bex Scott: [00:29:18] I got into collecting at the beginning of the pandemic. So before that, I didn't really know anything about Pyrex. It was always just like the measuring cup that my mom had that I don't think was even very old. It just said Pyrex on it. And that's kind of what I thought it was. And then after we cleaned out my grandparents garage, that's when I realized that there was this whole world of vintage Pyrex out there, and it kind of just spiraled after that. And that's been fun collecting everything and finding new pieces. And at the beginning, when I first started collecting, I would essentially buy everything that I found, even if it was dishwasher damaged or it was way overpriced. So I was spending all of this money on things that probably weren't even in good condition or worth it. Now I'm way more selective, but it was, yeah, it's so easy to do when you're learning and trying to figure out what patterns are and what things might be worth, and if they're even Pyrex at all. So.
Danielle: [00:30:25] Yeah, it really is, because, I mean there's some things that aren't even like marked Pyrex. I have one, I'm getting rid of it, but I have one that's I think it's from England.
Bex Scott: [00:30:36] Oh yeah. The JAJ.
Danielle: [00:30:37] It's their version, I can't remember what it says on the bottom, but it's their version of Pyrex. So like I have that and that's pretty cool. But I would have known nothing about it before I started getting into this. I would have been like, oh, that's not Pyrex, and just like, moved on from it. So the more you learn. My partner actually bought this really neat book off of Amazon, and it goes through like the history of each pattern and details it. We use that as a guideline at all times, because it tells you so much about different promotional pieces and stuff like that.
Bex Scott: [00:31:20] Is that the Pyrex passion book?
Danielle: [00:31:22] I think it is. Yeah.
Bex Scott: [00:31:23] This one.
Danielle: [00:31:25] Yeah, yeah, yeah, that is our Bible.
Bex Scott: [00:31:30] Yeah, I have it on my iPad. And then I went and bought the the paperback version. And then there's a second one that came out as well that has even more in it. So that one's great.
Danielle: [00:31:41] I do laugh at their like suggested prices because I'm like, yeah, try and tell, try and tell most people that. Like they're not, I think I was looking and it had like the Butter print as like the entire set for like $75. And I'm like yeah, okay.
Bex Scott: [00:32:01] Yeah.
Danielle: [00:32:03] Tell me where you can find that for that.
Bex Scott: [00:32:05] That would be great. But yeah.
Danielle: [00:32:07] That's what I'm saying. So I do find the prices they list comical.
Bex Scott: [00:32:14] Yeah. Pricing is one thing that's always very controversial, I find. I'm part of a bunch of Pyrex groups on Facebook, and there's a lot of them that just flat out say you're not allowed to ask if you did good buying this, because if you like it, it's worth it. And we can't tell you if the price is good or not.
Danielle: [00:32:36] I am not a part of them on Facebook because I don't really have Facebook, but I am a part of a couple Pyrex groups on Reddit and some of the finds they post on there are insane.
Bex Scott: [00:32:52] I haven't looked at Reddit for Pyrex groups. That's a good suggestion.
Danielle: [00:32:58] On Pyrex groups and Animal Crossing groups. Gotta love it. Yeah, my partner actually named her Animal Crossing Island Pyrexia.
Bex Scott: [00:33:11] That's great.
Danielle: [00:33:13] Is there anything else that you collect other than, like, the mushrooms and the Pyrex?
Bex Scott: [00:33:17] Mushrooms, Pyrex, little bluebirds. What else do I collect? Secretly, I collect brass. It's in a box that my husband can't, well, he found it the other day, but there's a bunch of - I thought he couldn't find it, but it was in a cereal box, I talk about this in one of my other episodes, but it was packed away in a cereal box in our basement, and he found it and opened it, and he said, What is this? I said, oh, that's just my brass. I'm selling it. Don't worry, it's going on Marketplace. But I do like brass.
Danielle: [00:33:51] That's funny. I don't think we have much brass around here.
Bex Scott: [00:33:55] It's heavy and it takes up space.
Danielle: [00:33:58] Yeah, it does, it does. And we don't have, with all my ceramics we don't have that much like shelving. I know you said you had that horse. Do you have any other ones?
Bex Scott: [00:34:14] No, none that I've really kept. I have one that's a little girl on a toilet reading a book, and it says something really funny. I think it's like a potty training needlepoint or cross-stitch or something.
Danielle: [00:34:31] I have a cross-stitch. I have a cross-stitch in my bathroom that says, please don't do coke in the bathroom.
Bex Scott: [00:34:38] That's awesome.
Danielle: [00:34:42] And everybody always is like, did someone do coke? And I'm like, no, no, no, not to my knowledge, but...
Bex Scott: [00:34:49] Yeah.
Danielle: [00:34:50] It's a warning. Like please don't.
Bex Scott: [00:34:53] And they won't now because that's up there.
Danielle: [00:34:55] Yeah. I asked nicely.
Bex Scott: [00:35:02] I'm trying to avoid getting into all the art glass and like the vases, and that's another thing that I really can't do because I don't have space.
Danielle: [00:35:15] I think we have one swing base, but I haven't gotten a whole lot into that. But we do have quite the collection of nesting hens.
Bex Scott: [00:35:29] Oh, I love those.
Danielle: [00:35:32] And my partner insists on putting candy in every single one of them.
Bex Scott: [00:35:36] That's great. Do you have a favorite one or a favorite color?
Danielle: [00:35:42] So blue is my favorite color. Oddly enough, since most of the house is done in like yellow, orange, green, but we have a cobalt blue that has like the oil slick on it, almost like carnival glass. And it is my favorite. And it just so happened to be given to us by my partner's grandmother, which just makes it that much more special.
Bex Scott: [00:36:11] Yeah, those are beautiful, I love them. I've had a few of them in the past, and it's always hard to tell if they're actually vintage or not. That's my biggest struggle is what year they were from and who made them. So I do a lot of research when I find them, and I think there's even some jadeite ones too that I've seen that are really pretty.
Danielle: [00:36:34] Yeah, we have a small jadeite one, but we have quite a few. They're all over the house.
Bex Scott: [00:36:41] What's the biggest one that you have?
Danielle: [00:36:45] A turkey.
Bex Scott: [00:36:47] Amazing.
Danielle: [00:36:48] Yeah, it's a nesting turkey. And it's like orange and yellow and... It's pretty cool. I mean, I just think it's so funny, you go into most people's houses that are, you know, around our ages, and it's minimalist and boring and gray. Like, there's just not a whole lot of personality.
Bex Scott: [00:37:17] Mhm.
Danielle: [00:37:18] So, you know what? If I'm a hoarder, so be it.
Bex Scott: [00:37:23] Yeah I agree, it's great for people coming over and starting conversations and especially like with our kids growing up, I'd rather them live in a house with memories and things to look at and ask questions about. Where is this from, and What year was this from, then see everything from, I don't know, we have, I don't know if you guys have HomeSense where you are. It's like a mass produced store or home decor store where people get just the run of the mill stuff, but I'd rather have all of the memories and the fun items.
Danielle: [00:37:59] Yeah, I mean, I think, I think that's a lot of what the newer generations are missing out on. Like they're not going to have the things that have been handed down generation after generation because so many people get rid of them. They're like, oh, this is ugly so I don't want it. But it's like, I don't know, these are my family's ceramics. So there might be some that I don't love. But my grandmother made it, and for some reason that means I can't get rid of it.
Bex Scott: [00:38:33] Yeah. I'm the same. Yeah. All of the things that I keep, even if I don't like them, I keep them because they came from somewhere special.
Danielle: [00:38:40] Yeah. So I just think that this next generation is going to be missing out on a lot of that.
Bex Scott: [00:38:48] Yeah, I agree, and that makes it even more fun to hunt for items and just love vintage.
Danielle: [00:38:57] It definitely does. It's definitely something that I want to be able to pass down. My brother doesn't have quite the same enthusiasm as I have about certain things, but he has asked for a couple of different things we have. Like my great great grandmother, we have her cookie cutters, which is probably weird because they have just been passed down. When I went down, I split the bucket with him and he has, like my grandfathers and my great grandfather's vices, which is like, I don't know if you do much woodworking, but he has that out in his garage, which is really neat because my brother does some really amazing woodworking, creates a lot of custom pieces. So it's pretty cool that he's able to incorporate my relatives vices into his work, which he definitely wouldn't have to. Like, he has other other ones, but when he was able to get those, he retired the other ones that he was using and just put those away so that he could keep using our family's. So I know that he doesn't have quite the same love for the ceramics as me. But, you know, hopefully one day when my niece and nephew are a bit older, I'm able to teach them about this kind of stuff and maybe they'll have an interest in a piece or two.
Bex Scott: [00:40:34] Yeah, yeah, that would be great. Same with my family. My brother's not into all of the the same kind of things that I like. And he's more into the tools that our family had for woodworking and construction and that kind of thing. So that's his stuff. And then I've taken all of the the other stuff, so it's nice that way.
Danielle: [00:40:58] That's been the divide for us. My brother's biggest one is like my father currently has a pool table that's been passed down. Why we have such, like, random things that get found in my family I don't know, but my brother is insistent on the pool table and the light that hangs above it that those are his. And I'm like, I don't even have space for them, so go for it. But it's just funny the things that you kind of get attached to.
Bex Scott: [00:41:33] Mhm. Perfect. Thank you so much for coming on the episode today and for chatting about vintage. It's really great to be able to talk to somebody else that loves similar things and understand what it's like to be a hoarder.
Danielle: [00:41:52] Yeah, it was great jumping on and getting to chat with you. Yeah, it's definitely nice to talk to people that are like-minded.
Bex Scott: [00:42:00] Yeah.
Bex Scott: [00:00:31] Hey everybody, you're listening to the Pyrex With Bex podcast. My name is Bex Scott and I am so excited that you're tuning in. I've been wanting to record this podcast for quite some time. I am a full-on Pyrex addict. I am self-proclaimed. But also if you were to ask my friends and family, I'm sure they would say exactly the same thing. And I wanted to take this episode to explain to you a little bit about why I got started, give you a backstory, and tell you a little bit about my addiction. So I started collecting Pyrex back in 2019, and this was when the pandemic had just started and we were on lockdown. We had started to lose our hobbies, things that we loved, we couldn't see family and friends. And for many of us, it was a time where we were looking for new things to do and new hobbies to have and Pyrex became that hobby for me. I loved being able to research bowls and patterns and what years things came out and going to the thrift store in hopes that I'd find my next favorite bowl.
Bex Scott: [00:01:46] And the whole reason that I found Pyrex was because of my grandparents. I remember at the beginning of the pandemic, we had decided to help my granny and grandpa clear out their garage and they had a full single garage full of we weren't sure what, but I knew there would be a lot of vintage clothes, jackets, dresses in there. And at the time that's mainly what I was interested in. So we went over and started unloading boxes and I remember my mom took down this Rubbermaid bin. It was full of dishes and glassware that was all wrapped up in linens and tablecloths and even some old needlepoint. And I remember seeing this lasagna pan and it was lime green. And at the time I had never heard of Pyrex outside of the measuring cup that I'm sure everybody's mom or even that you have in your kitchen. I unwrapped it and I saw that it was this lime lasagna pan and I instantly fell in love. I kept unwrapping and I also found a green mixing bowl and a red mixing bowl. And I was hooked. They looked like Christmas to me. And right after we left, I immediately went on Google and started looking into what these Pyrex bowls were, what year they were from, and started asking my grandparents questions about where they're from.
Bex Scott: [00:03:18] It ended up that they're from my mom's aunt, so my great aunt, and it was all items that they had saved from when she had passed and they ended up in their garage. So this was just a few of the items of Pyrex that she must have had. And to this day, I think about what her kitchen must have looked like and how amazing it must have been. And I wish that I could go back and see it now, knowing what all of these vintage items were. So I'm doing some research and nothing that I had was really, now knowing, hard to find or rare but it was still beautiful to me. I had the lime 232 oblong baking dish. Lime was launched with Flamingo Pink in 1952. It's not my favorite color, but I have to say when you pair the lime with the flamingo pink, it really looks great in a China cabinet or on a countertop. The lime and the flamingo pieces are the ones that we use in our house on a regular basis to bake cakes. So they've seen a lot of birthdays. And trust me, if you've never baked a cake in a Pyrex dish, it's amazing. We've used the brownie dishes, the lasagna pans, and the round cake dishes or the cake pans to do them and they pop out easily and the cakes are delicious and moist, so definitely give it a try.
Bex Scott: [00:04:44] If you like the lime color, there's also a complete line of lime green, solid border, opal dinnerware. And this is pretty cool. They have a 22 karat gold band on them. So if you're into dinnerware, give that a search and check those out. So the green mixing bowl that I mentioned ended up being part of the primary set. And the primary set made its debut in 1945 and was the first time that Corning ever sold opal glass to the consumer market using the Pyrex name. And I can see why they decided to start with this primary set because it's beautiful. It's yellow, green, red and blue, and it just, it looks great in your kitchen, I think, and it stands the test of time with the colors. I also had the 404 red mixing bowl, and after doing a bunch of research, I've found that starting in the 1950s, the 404 was sold individually in either yellow or red. So if you know the primary set, it's usually the 404, the biggest bowl, starts off with yellow. But you can also get this alternate red bowl. And to me, I think I like the big red bowl a little bit better than the yellow just because it's such a nice, rich color. The downside to the red is that I've found it is the hardest to find in good condition.
Bex Scott: [00:06:11] I don't know whether it's that people just use the red more often. I've also heard, this might just be a rumor, so don't quote me on this, that there's something in the red paint that made it so that it couldn't withstand the test of time like the other bowls did when they were being washed. But like I said, it could be a rumor, I heard it in a Pyrex group, but if you know otherwise or if you know if this is true, make sure you let me know because it's something I've been wondering about. So I would love to know which bowl was the first bowl that you ever collected or as I called the ones that started it off for me, the Gateway Bowl for you. Which do you love the most? Which pattern are you collecting? Let me know. Find me on Instagram at Pyrex With Bex. Send me a DM. I'd love to chat about what got you started with Pyrex collecting or vintage collecting. So back to 2019, I had started my collection with these three bowls, and this kicked things off full steam ahead for me. I started buying bowls like crazy, but the primary set was the main one that I had focused on, and I think that I had ended up with maybe 5 or 6 primary sets. Regardless, way too many Pyrex dishes. There's no reason I needed five full sets of them, so I did end up selling them on Marketplace and finding homes for them. But to this day, the Pyrex primary set is still one of my favorites.
Bex Scott: [00:07:47] And if you're a new collector, you need to go out and grab the Pyrex Passion book. It's by Michael Barber. You can buy it online. This has been the biggest help for me as a collector. It goes through all of the colors, the patterns, when they were released, and descriptions for all of them. It will be your Pyrex Bible. And I remember getting it for the first time on my iPad, I bought the online version of it, and it was so cool being able to flip through and see all of these bowls. I not too long ago invested in the paperback copy, which I think is a lot better than doing the online version because you can put sticky notes in it, you can mark it up as you collect bowls, you can check things off in pencil if you want, and just carry it with you and have that paperback copy that you can just hold in your hands. But in this book, Pyrex Passion, I remember seeing one of the very first Pyrex ads for the primary set. It said special $3.50 Pyrex ware color bowl set only $2.49. You save $1.01 limited time only. World's most famous mixing bowl set at almost a third off just in time for Mother's Day. Here's your chance to get America's favorite mixing bowl set at the lowest price in history. And just in time for Mother's Day, think of all the help these big colorful bowls will be for mixing, baking, serving and storing. Think how bright and gay they'll be on the table. Easy to wash clean, too, and they nest together to save space on your shelf. This special bargain offer ends June 30th, so don't wait. Get your Pyrex ware color bowl set and save $1.01 at any housewares store.
Bex Scott: [00:09:40] I thought this was pretty incredible to get a whole set for $3.50. Think about how much prices have gone up since that time. I know for where I live, I'm in Canada in a small town in Alberta and a primary set goes for around $100. That's for all four bowls in great condition, no dishwasher damage. Another thing I found really cool, which kind of ties into the primary bowl set or any mixing bowl, is in this vintage Pyrex prize recipes book that I have. I was flipping through and I saw a picture of somebody tipping a 404 red mixing bowl over and a full on angel food cake is coming out of it. So I've used the regular brownie or lasagna or cake pans to do cakes, but I've never baked a cake in a mixing bowl. And this is something that I'm definitely going to have to try.
Bex Scott: [00:10:38] So the recipe says, Angel food cake in a hurry with strawberry frosting. One package prepared angel food cake mix, prepare cake mix in a Pyrex mixing bowl according to the directions on the package, being sure that egg whites are beaten so stiff they do not slide when the bowl is tipped. When folding dry ingredients into egg white foam, have spatula or spoon reach the very bottom of the bowl. Leave the batter right in the Pyrex mixing bowl and bake. Turn the bowl upside down on rack to cool before removing cake from bowl. Ice inverted cake with strawberry frosting or sprinkle with confectioner's sugar. Time bake about 35 minutes. Temperature 350°F. Moderate oven. Amount one cake 9.75 inches in diameter. 12 servings. Dish Pyrex four quart mixing bowl. So I don't know if any of you have ever used a mixing bowl to bake a cake, but please let me know because this is something that I think is really cool.
Bex Scott: [00:11:38] You know a little bit about me and my Pyrex addiction. I'd love to know about yours. What was the first bowl that you ever collected or the first Gateway Bowl, as I like to call it, that started your Pyrex collection? Feel free to find me on Instagram at Pyrex With Bex or check out my website PyrexWithBex.com. Shoot me an email on there and check out some of the vintage items that I have for sale.
Bex Scott: [00:00:02] Hey everybody, it's Bex Scott and welcome to the Pyrex with Bex podcast where, you guessed it, I talk about vintage Pyrex, but also all things vintage housewares. I'll take you on my latest thrifting adventures, talk about reselling, chat with other enthusiasts about their collections, and learn about a bunch of really awesome items from the past. Subscribe now on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you love listening to podcasts so you don't miss a beat.
Bex Scott: [00:00:30] Hey, everybody, this is Bex Scott and you are listening to the Pyrex with Bex podcast. Today. I wanted to go through the top six items that I always pick up at the thrift store if the price is right. That is the most important part of this. If the price is right for you to resell, if you're a reseller, or if it's right to you as a collector. So for those of you who know me, I am addicted to thrifting. And I realized that I had an actual addiction this year when I took all of January off of thrifting and buying anything vintage, and it was so difficult for me, I had no idea it would be that hard. But it really brought to light the fact that I love going to Value Village. I love going to Goodwill. And it is a huge part of my life. It's become a hobby, something that I like to do when I'm feeling stressed, and it's really helped me to connect with an amazing group of people on Instagram and whatnot, and it's just something that's really fun to do.
Bex Scott: [00:01:41] So when I go to the thrift store, I usually have a few things in mind that I'm always on the lookout for. And for those of you who are new to thrifting or new to reselling, I thought I would bring up these six things so that maybe you could start taking a look when you go to Value Village, Goodwill, Salvation Army. And I'm located in Canada so what I'm finding might be a bit different than what you're finding in the States or different parts of the world, and I would love to know what your top ten items are as well. So feel free to find me on Instagram @PyrexWithBex to let me know your opinion of what I'm going to go through in this podcast episode, and what you would add or maybe take out from what I'm going to mention, because price has a huge impact on what you pick up when you go out thrifting. If you're a collector, that price may have a lot higher of a ceiling, because you'll pay a lot more to have that piece in your collection. I know I'm like that with Pyrex. If there's a piece that I absolutely need to have and I find it at the thrift store and it is a bit higher than I would usually pay, especially if I'm going to be reselling it. I don't hesitate to invest that money in it. But if I'm looking to make some profit off of it, then I'm looking for a lot lower of a cost.
Bex Scott: [00:03:15] So let's get into it. The first item that I have on my list is obviously Pyrex. I would be feeling pretty weird if I didn't have Pyrex on this list. Unfortunately, it's becoming harder and harder to find good Pyrex in the thrift stores, and I'm sure all of you know this. It's the same across the board with all of the collectors that I talk to, and those of you who have been collecting for quite a long time, not myself, you have mentioned to me how easy or how much easier it used to be, even 5 or 6 years ago, to find good pieces at the thrift store. So before we had our daughter, I would wake up early a couple of times a week to go to Value Village and Goodwill. Those are the ones in the city that I lived in that I like to hit up, and I would line up before it opened, so I'd be there super early. It was cold a lot of the time. I was still going in the winter. And this was the only way that I could find good Pyrex at the thrift stores, and it was definitely worth it for me. It was pretty funny because the same people lined up every single morning, there were about 15 or 20 of us, and I always try to be maybe 4th or 5th in the line. Any earlier than that and I was not awake enough to be out there. But you would start to recognize the people who were in line and start chatting with them, and you'd get to know them. And there was always a teacup lady. She was always ahead of me. There was always a video game and book guy. And then you had your handful of what I like to call vintage generalists like myself. And those ones were my main competition. You'd see the doors open and everybody would pile in all at the same time, and then kind of disperse into the store. And if you were fast enough, you could grab a cart. But sometimes there wasn't enough time because people were in it to win it, and you'd all rush towards the same shelf and kind of scan the shelves that you pass to see if there's anything good on your way back, and you would hope that you got there first. And some of the best finds that I've had at Value Village and the Salvation Army have been an almost full set of the Friendship Cinderella bowls. The 441 was dishwasher damaged, but it was, the rest of it was in amazing condition. I found a charcoal Snowflake divided dish, a Friendship divided dish, a full primary set. I found a few full primary sets at the thrift store. And a bunch of other just random, little less desirable pieces here and there.
Bex Scott: [00:06:01] Something that I see all the time is the JAJ Cherry Blossom, and those ones I always leave behind. When I first started reselling, I would pick them up, but they are so common now that they've kind of lost their appeal to me. Those are the ones that I would buy if I needed something to cook in, that I wasn't going to put into my collection or my display, or if I wanted to gift somebody something. I've heard that people, they make their friends and their family casseroles, and they gift them the dish that it comes in and I think that's a really great idea to do with some of these less desirable, more commonly found casserole and pieces of dishware.
Bex Scott: [00:06:46] Next up is brass, and I only pick up brass if the price is right. And depending on what it is, that price is usually $7 or under for me. And my favorite have always been the animals, especially deer. Our baby's nursery was full of deer. I even put some brass deer in there. And I know I always mention this on my podcast, but my husband despises brass and I try not to put it around the house. I love it at Christmas. I've purchased huge brass deer for Christmas decorations, and I've also found large seagull wall hangings, a massive brass easel, a set of lounging frogs. The frogs were probably top of my list for my favorite. I like to call them the sexy frogs because they're both lying on their side with their arms under their head, lounging like they're striking a pose on a beach. And I've been pretty lucky as well with brass at online auctions. Just this past week, I won a box of 11 pieces for $17, which I'm pretty excited about because the Whatnot Canadian group of resellers that I'm a part of, we're thinking of having a brass, glass and wood seller train coming up, and I'm hoping to join that one to sell a bunch of brass and glass goodies. So most antique brass items are solid brass, and something that I've learned, a way of identifying solid brass pieces is by using a magnet. And if you feel a pull when you put the magnet up to it, then the item is brass plated and not solid brass. And a lot of the vintage or antique brass pieces, they don't have the display stamps or maker's marks to depict the place and year of manufacturing, so that's not as common. So usually if they do, you'll know that they are more modern pieces and not the antique or vintage brass. So any brass that I pick up now I don't usually hold onto. It's listed for sale on Marketplace or in one of my Whatnot shows. So if you're a reseller or looking to get into reselling, brass is definitely a no-brainer if you're able to find it for a decent price. So always keep your eye on that price tag.
Bex Scott: [00:09:08] Next up we have the Canadian favorite Blue Mountain pottery. So I have sold a large amount of Blue Mountain pottery over the years, especially animals; elephants, deer, dogs, and then other common objects like vases, ashtrays, candy dishes. And it's actually a pretty hot seller with Americans right now. A lot of my fellow Whatnot sellers, they sell Blue Mountain pottery online in their auctions and their live shows, and it does really well. So word to the wise, though, when you find it at a thrift store, check every single inch of it because it is so commonly chipped. I've gotten overly excited way too many times and haven't realized that there was a chip or 2 or 5 until I got home. I just was so excited to have found a piece. And then I get home and I'm super disappointed and there's not much you can do with it at that point except keep it in your collection or, I guess, say goodbye to it. So I wanted to give you guys a bit of information about Blue Mountain Pottery, because I've known about it for quite a while, but I've never really dug into the backstory or its beginnings.
Bex Scott: [00:10:22] So it was founded in Collingwood in Ontario, Canada in the early 1950s, and this is all information that I've found from my good old friend Worthpoint. The company initially bought ceramic blanks and decorated them with ski motifs, which I think is pretty cool. Soon the founders produced and sold their creations. Before long, the company was successful and exported globally, including to the United States, Europe and Australia. I'd love to know how many pieces or how prevalent it is in the United States, because I haven't heard of it much outside of Canada. So if you are a US or European or even Australian collector, let me know on my Instagram. So the pottery began in a barn at Blue Mountain Ski Resort. After they noticed the rich red clay being turned over to create new ski trails, they used it to make pottery to sell in the resort's gift shop. They decorated and glazed the products, primarily vases, ashtrays, bowls, and stylized animal figures. Moving to a factory allowed the business to manufacture tea and coffee sets, tableware, flower pots, decorative ware, and other sculpted animals and figurines. It became well known for its trademarked reflowing, or drip glazing technique that mimicked Blue Mountains colors during the summer. That's something that I also didn't know. I thought it was just a cool technique that they used with the kind of different glazes and flowy look, but it's really awesome to know that it was based off of the mountain's colors. After hand-applying one lighter and one darker glaze on a piece, the colors ran together during the firing process and resulted in mixed hue streaks. The company is best known for using this glaze to make deep green, almost emerald pieces. That's mostly what I've found when I go thrifting. Beginning in the 1960s, the company also produced other colors, including Harvest Gold, Cobalt Blue, Slate Red, Mocha, and Pewter. And I have to say that I think the red is my favorite. The color is so vibrant and it's just beautiful. So they designed many Blue Mountain pottery molds, including its frond vases, bookends, and jugs. They created the Angelfish figurine in the mid 1950s. If you haven't seen the Angelfish, look it up because it's also very beautiful and it's one of the potteries' most famous pieces, beloved by collectors. In the late 1980s, they made a more realistic version of the design called Tropical Fish. Studio potter Dominic Stazioni created hand-thrown vases, bowls, serving ware, and other free-form pieces for the company during the 1960s and 1970s. Designer David Bennett designed the Romar and Robert Wilson Collections, two animal figurine lines named after the company's later owner, Robert Wilson Blair. Rising production costs and increased overseas competition caused the factory to close in 2004.
Bex Scott: [00:13:27] Next up, I have cross stitch and crewel patterns. And crewel is something that I've recently gotten into. And I have to say, if you have the patience, it is a super rewarding hobby and also great for reselling. If you're able to find complete kits with a pattern and thread, you're definitely set. The kits they make now, they're pretty, but I find that the vintage ones, they have so much more character and color, depth, and just personality, so they're definitely worth finding if you can. A few of the brands to keep an eye out for are Dimensions, Sunset Stitchery, Paragon, and Jiffy Stitchery. And right now I'm doing a Paragon winter scene. It's massive so it's gonna take me probably like the whole year. But it is so fun and relaxing as long as you have that patience. Anything floral, mushroom, or with cute little animals is also a hit right now. And another thing that I do is I buy complete and framed pieces for resale, and I find that they sell really well because people love adding them to their collage walls in their house. Or a lot of people have a sentimental attachment to a certain pattern. I know that growing up my grandma had, I believe it was crewel because I came across the pattern for it actually on Facebook Marketplace the other day, and it was the Lord's Prayer, and it had flowers all around it like a frame, and that one really stood out in my mind. So I think for a lot of people, they remember their grandparents or their parents having them in their house, and it's nice to be able to recreate them or to have them in their home.
Bex Scott: [00:15:14] Number five on my list is sheets and bedding. So anything linens. Before collecting and reselling vintage, I'm not going to lie, buying used bedding and sheets did not seem that appealing to me. But now that I've kind of gotten over that fear, I know it's silly, I'm all over finding them. There are some pretty amazing floral print sheets and bedding sets you can snag in the linen section of the thrift store, and I typically look for flat sheets and pillowcases, as they're usually pretty reasonably priced, and I find it easier to look for damage or stains or rips on those pieces than some of the fitted sheets and larger items. Some of my favorite brands are Wabasso, Burlington, Elegance, and Picot. If I pronounced any of those wrong, which I probably did, I apologize to everybody. One of the vintage resellers that I met through Whatnot, she actually purchased a Wabasso flat sheet from me and used it as wallpaper in her new shop, which was a really cool idea. It looked amazing. It looked like it had been painted on the wall. So if anybody has old vintage sheets out there and you're looking to just spruce up a wall in your office or in your room, check out some old linens because it's such a great idea.
Bex Scott: [00:16:35] Okay. And last on my list I have vintage kids books. And I have always been a huge bookworm, especially when I was younger. I would go to the library and spend hours picking out books with my mom. Looking through all the kids books at the thrift store has brought back a ton of memories for me, especially when I find the same ones that I read when I was growing up and when I was little. And I usually find that the vintage books are easy to pick out. They tend to have hard covers, they have nicely textured covers, and they seem to use a different palette of colors in their illustrations and the covers of the books. So I tend to pick up anything with beautifully illustrated pages, because I've discovered that many collectors like to make craft projects out of the images. So this would fall under the ephemera category, which I'm still learning about. My latest addiction is actually a vintage greeting card, so I'll probably do an episode coming up about that, but I find that I have trouble cutting pages out of books unless they're already pretty damaged. But I have seen some awesome craft projects come out of books lately. And I obviously gravitate to the vintage Little Golden Books. But after doing some research on what to keep an eye out for, I discovered there are a bunch of other titles that are extremely hard to find, like needle in a haystack hard to find. They're first editions, they're special copies, and they're worth thousands and thousands of dollars. But I thought it was kind of fun to learn about them and to, you never know, keep an eye out for maybe some of these books.
Bex Scott: [00:18:20] So the first one is The Hobbit, the first 1500 first edition copies published by Allen and Unwin in the UK on September 21st of 1937, are the ones that you want to be looking for. Number two, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. The current hot copy is Salvador Dali's illustrated limited edition. There are only 2500 copies from 1969. Three, Where the Wild Things Are. I loved this book growing up, and the movie was pretty good as well. The copy defined is the 1963 first edition published by Harper and Row. Number four, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl. This was another favorite when I was growing up, and the one that you're going to look for is the 1964 first edition published by Knopf. It has been signed by Dahl and has a pristine dust jacket. Good luck finding that one. And number five is The Velveteen Rabbit. And this one you want is the 1922 William Nicholson copy. And I just recently read The Velveteen Rabbit for the first time to my daughter, and it is a very cute story.
Bex Scott: [00:19:40] So I hope you enjoyed these six items that I always pick up at the thrift if the price is right. And I'd love to hear from you guys on my Instagram at Pyrex with Bex. Let me know what you always put into your cart at the thrift store. If you agree with what I've said, if you disagree, and what you would add to my list. Thanks so much everybody!
