When he does host a sale on his Instagram show, pieces usually sell out as soon as he lists them. As for selling it, he says it’s less a moneymaking venture than a way to make sure his collection doesn’t take over his house. And then I would dig through another layer and there would be more.” When he learned about the market for vintage pieces, he started his own collection, which is now well into the hundreds. “Before I knew it, I was bringing home a Subaru loaded down with Pyrex. In the process of helping his sister clean out their parents’ house, he discovered what they had collected at Goodwill over the years. Smith got into Pyrex the way a lot of people do - digging through piles of it in his childhood home. He films most of his live shows in his kitchen, where the backdrop shows shelves stacked with his rotating collection. Smith, who works full time as a high-school teacher, is an upbeat narrator for the hundreds who regularly join in, and along with discussions of Easter displays and Pyrex from around the world, he sometimes hosts sales, offering pieces he finds on his trips around the country - some of which he takes just to shop for Pyrex. This is how Nate Smith kicks off his Instagram Live sessions as On each edition of Let’s Chat About Pyrex, the weekly show he hosts, the 47-year-old Smith, sporting a bow tie, kicks off a conversation about hunting for Pyrex, styling Pyrex, and selling Pyrex. And I’m like, ‘Oh God, there’s more.’ And I never looked back after that.” Since then, Thompson has amassed hundreds of Pyrex pieces, which she regularly posts on Instagram to nearly 20,000 followers.įor resellers of Pyrex, life has gotten pretty hectic. But then she went into an antique shop, where “on the floor, covered in layers and layers of dirt, was this gorgeous yellow-and-gold piece. Once she completed it, she thought she was done. Those who grew up eating on white-on-pink Gooseberry, for instance, are able to buy most pieces in that style for less than $100, while others may have memories of family meals in Blue Tulip casserole dishes, which can be picked up on Etsy for as little as $35.ĭawn Bornheim Thompson, an Oregon-based collector, began collecting Pyrex more than a decade ago when she tried to re-create a set her family had used in the 1960s. People tend to think of Pyrex patterns as “their own,” and common patterns are still reasonably priced. Produced mostly between the 1940s and the early 1980s, they cover virtually every trend from the second half of the 20th century, from Americana-inspired pieces with bald eagles to atomic-age starbursts and line-drawn daisies popular in the 1980s.Ī big part of the appeal is how easy it is to begin, often with what’s already in the cupboards. Decades later, thanks to their durability, many vintage Pyrex pieces are still in good condition with more than 150 patterns to collect. Corning, which bought Pyrex in 1936, stopped producing the opalware line in the late 1990s, and the rights to the name are now held by a private-equity firm. (The clear borosilicate glass products, also known as Pyrex, are still in production). The craze for vintage Pyrex isn’t new, but it is growing. Just a few days ago, another piece of rare Pyrex - a pink bowl in the Duchess pattern, with its original lid and brass warming stand included - sold on eBay for more than $4,000. But rising prices and increasing competition have brought some tension into a scene that many consider a community. Was it the Corning Museum? Martha Stewart? The seller trying to artificially inflate the price? The forums are normally filled with friendly chatter about new acquisitions, holiday-themed displays, and rare patterns spotted in an antiques mall or on Facebook marketplace. In the “Let’s Chat About Pyrex” Facebook group, which has more than 500 members, and in groups like Pyrex Collectors and Pyrex and All Things Vintage, with more than 25,000 members each, members speculated about who the bidder might be. The auction brought a new wave of attention to die-hard Pyrex fans and their corners of the internet. Grandma’s around the world are rolling around in their graves!” wrote one viewer. (The previous record for a Pyrex dish in this pattern was around $6,000.) Thousands viewed posts about the auction on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram until the final sum came in. Still, $22,100 - the winning bid - is a lot of money. Because it was a prototype or a limited edition from 1959, only a few pieces have survived, and even fewer find their way to the open market. No Pyrex is rarer than this bowl in the hearts-and-shamrocks print from 1959. “Twenty thousand for a bowl?” That’s what most people said as the price of Lucky in Love continued ticking up on an eBay auction last year.
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