We put some of our Revere Ware cookware to good use this Thanksgiving. Here is my 12 year old daughter working on the filling for an apple pie.
This is such a great picture because she was featured in some of the early pictures we did when making stock photos for the new replacement parts.
I’ve seen lots of ways old Revere Ware can fail. For example, when the aluminum disk in the Tri-Ply cookware melts all over a stove top.
We had our own fail last week with a popover pan. My wife loves making popovers and the kids really enjoy them. She has used her favorite popover pan many times, and always starts by putting it in the oven while the oven is heating, as per the popover pan instructions.
However, a few days ago, this process seems to have gone awry. When she opened the oven, she noticed a red coating on the oven door and much of the inside of the oven; the popover pan has a red finish. The coating seems to have vaporized and settled on everything.
Here you can see how the pan finish has mostly disappeared in many areas.
The oven racks seems to have taken much of the red finish, but the door got quite a bit as well.
We were left scratching our heads. We checked the oven controls; did we accidentally put it on self-clean? Nope, the self-clean setting is all the way around the dial from the bake setting.
I suppose it is possible our oven malfunctioned and reached a temperature far higher than it should have, we may never know.
In our case, the deposit of red finish seems to scrub off pretty easily with soap and water, so there is no real damage done other than a ruined inexpensive popover pan.
When a customer returns an item to Amazon, warehouse staff evaluates the item to see if it is OK for resale or not (fulfillable), or they are supposed to. Since we started getting our unfulfillable Amazon returns send back to us, we’ve seen some strange things come back that were supposedly our parts. Either customers get mixed up and return the wrong item with the wrong label, or people are intentionally returning something different than what they got so they can keep the item. Probably some of both.
What is troubling though is when the Amazon staff returns things to inventory that are either damaged, missing parts, or the completely wrong thing.
A few months ago we started putting a sticker on all of our parts with our Gmail address so Amazon customers know how to contact us if they have an issue. We got an email from a customer this morning that seemed really strange.
I only received the yellow part. Missing the brake part of the device
We don’t sell anything yellow and I have no idea what on our parts might be considered the brake part. So I asked for a picture.
Well the knob looks familiar, but the yellow thing is part of a steering wheel lock.
So it appears that someone ordered that item, and our knob, and returned part of the steering wheel lock and our knob in the same return. Amazon staff somehow evaluated this combination and found it fit for resale.
As a seller, I find much to be desired with Amazon’s Marketplace for 3rd party sellers. As a customer, I’ve become more and more cautious about what I buy from Amazon and always try to use a service like Fakespot to vet items. This one example shows a little bit of all that is wrong with Amazon these days. Clearly, they have chosen quantity over quality, at the expense of customers and sellers.
What I mean is that they have prioritized growth in sales volume, number of sellers, and number of products while making it harder for honest sellers and for customers, and virtually ignoring abusive sellers that do things like massively fabricate reviews and steal other sellers stores and ruin their reputation with cheap knockoff products.
Why would they do this? Perhaps because they are the 1000 pound gorilla now and they can. Perhaps because they have been able to deflect criticism thus far and have been taken to task over their failures. Perhaps because they are making a conscious decision that it would just cost too much to provider better customer service for sellers and to put more effort into cracking down on abuse and fraud.
Last night my wife and I both found the same food for one of our pets, me on Amazon, and she on Chewy.com; same price in both places. The choice was easy; whenever we can, we will divert our spending to another retailer over Amazon.com. We still give them a lot of business, but less than we used to.
You don’t often see vintage items that are new old stock (new never used). This one is a 12″ skillet from before 1968, for a great starting bid of only $68.85.
We’ve seen the amount of Revere Ware listed on eBay grow significantly over the last couple of years, amounting to over 16,000 items listed at any given time right now.
If you are considering replacing some damaged pieces, or completing your vintage Revere Ware collection, the availability of used Revere Ware right now is better than I’ve ever seen it.
At the prices they are typically listed for, I’m not one to go in for the fairly rare (and sometimes just painted) colored Revere Ware Bakelite handles and knobs that appear on eBay several times a year. But I like the color of this latest set, and the price is pretty reasonable given the rarity.
My best guess on the size would be equivalent to our medium or large handles.
