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.
If you aren’t familiar with the practice of eBay drop ship listings, sellers take items they can buy off Amazon.com, and list them on eBay for more. When an order is placed, they simply place an order with Amazon.com with the eBay buyers address as the shipping address. All this is done behind with automated software, making it very easy for these sellers to list tons of items and handle sales with a minimum of effort.
But of course, they just make money from unsuspecting buyers that don’t know to look directly on Amazon.com for a cheaper price. Returns can be difficult, and you will get no support from the seller typically. We recommend you stay away from cheesy looking listings like these on eBay. But sometimes they can be rather funny in how inept the listings look.
We also do sell some of our more popular parts directly on eBay.
Much of the time when people list products from our Amazon.com listing on eBay, they just copy everything over. But sometimes, seemingly to attempt to make them more attractive, they embellish them. I found two such embellished listings that makes it clear the people doing this are just doing it en-masse and don’t really check the content for accuracy or to see if it makes sense.
Okay, great, top seller and fast shipping. Does anyone really believe claims like that anymore? It’s like adding L$$K or RARE! to an eBay listing title. Personally, I avoid all listings like that. And what exactly do this icons mean in the context of a product like this?
But now look what they’ve done to the content?
I got a chuckle out of that. I’m guessing that no-one is really buying from listings like that.
The USPS recently implemented new standards for First Class mail.
Single piece first class mail traveling within the same region will still have a delivery time of two days.
This affects only letters and flats, not packages. They are apparently still holding the standards the same for First Class Packages (2-3 days). I don’t think those standard are anything close to the reality. In our recent shipping time review, we found that even within the same region we ship from (west coast) still took an average of 3 1/2 days, not the two they claim, and cross country packages took 4-5 days on average.
Price hikes: They’ll be in place until at least Dec 26. And it could cost anywhere from 25 cents to $5 more to ship packages depending on the service. But don’t expect costs to go down much in the New Year: the agency plans to adjust prices twice a year, in January and July.
Since our shipping cost calculator queries the USPS system in real time, orders will reflect any price increase by the USPS.
Over the holiday season, postal performance sank: 71 percent on-time delivery for two-day mail and 38 percent for three-day mail during the last week of December.
Like we said, order items for the holidays very early this year.
People love their Revere Ware nesting bowls with lids, as evidenced by the many requests we’ve gotten over the years for replacement lids. Right now there is a new old stock set on eBay with lids, at a very reasonable price.
We recently wrote about the current state of USPS shipping (which is how most of our orders are shipped as it is the lowest cost for packages of the size we ship).
An article in the Wall Street Journal today presents the official ship-by-dates as release by the USPS, UPS, and Fedex, for packages to arrive by December 24th, in time for Christmas.
The U.S. Postal Service is recommending domestic mail for destinations in the contiguous U.S. be sent by Dec. 15 for those using its ground service. The recommended date is Dec. 17 for first-class mail, Dec. 18 for priority mail, and Dec. 23 for priority mail express.
If this holds true, it will present a much better picture than last year, where many of our shipments shipped in early December took 2 weeks or more (some took 4 weeks) to arrive. But I remain skeptical given the general disarray that is all things supply chain, are this year.
My advice, order by late November to insure delivery by Christmas, just to be sure.
There are quite a few listing of our parts on listed eBay by sketchy sellers, that are drop-shopped form our Amazon.com listings, when ordered. We aren’t happy about this but eBay (and Amazon) don’t seem that interested in stopping it. The downside is that people pay more than they have to and get zero support from the seller who knows nothing about the parts. Returns can be difficult if they are allowed.
But this one I found today takes the cake:
So that’s one of our stock photos, and the listing text is straight off of our website. But the price! Can you believe that price? Who is going to buy a replacement handle for that price?
Also note that the price is listed in Canadian dollars, but the item is shipping out of the UK.
I can’t pretend to understand in any way how this listing makes sense to anyone.
Here is one of the hard to find old style 2-screw handles on eBay, if you are looking for them.
There are a couple of blue replacement 2-screw handles (one and two) on eBay right now, if blue is your color.
I’d been a difficult year and a half with regards to shipping via the US Postal Service, with much slower service, some extremely long ship times around the 2020 holiday season, and the somewhat more frequent unplanned world tour for some packages. I thought I’d take a quick gander at some of our recent shipments to see how the USPS is doing in the last couple of weeks.
First, let me say that, we ship almost all of our packages via the USPS because it is far cheaper than either UPS or Fedex. So, despite issues, there really isn’t a better option unless you want to pay three times as much. And even UPS and Fedex had issues last holiday season.
On average, shipments leave our fulfillment center about one business day after the order is placed.
It used to be the USPS promised first class delivery to anywhere in the US in 2-3 days. So how are they doing right now? About double that. The average delivery time to anywhere in the US among all packages was about 4 days. Individual regions varied:
West Coast: 3 1/2 days (as few as 2 and as many as 6)
Midwest: 3 days (as few as 2 and as many as 4)
South: 5 days (as few as 4 and as many as 6)
East Coast: 4 1/3 days (as few as 4 and as many as 6)
We also had one package going from Nevada to the East Coast take an unexpected trip to Hawaii and another that was delivered to the USPS in Nevada and hasn’t moved in 5 days, so these anomalies are still happening with some regularity.
As we head into what is likely going to be a very chaotic holiday season, expect things to get worse. It wasn’t unusual last December for some USPS shipments to take 3 or more weeks in the continental US.
Another factor is that the disruption may start earlier this year. There is a lot of information starting to appear that container shipping is very messed up right now, with the average time on the water going from 41 days to over 70 days, and 100 ships off the cost of Southern California waiting to be unloaded. Retailers are going to have a very hard time getting everything restocked for Christmas, which means many things will be unavailable and people will frantically be ordering what they can. Furthermore, in response to this, it seems likely that a lot of shoppers are going to start doing their Christmas shopping early, which means November might see an extraordinary number of packages shipped and see extended delays as well.
Also consider that, despite the global pandemic in the last 18 months, personal income and savings are way up due to all the extraordinary measures the government has taken, and the fact that people aren’t spending a lot on transportation, vacations, and other things. This means that there is more than the usual amount of money out there for holiday spending ,which will push up purchases and therefore shipping volumes.
The USPS seems to have held about steady with first class shipments in the US with the above numbers for most of the year. I would expect October to be about the same, and then things start to get worse in November.
What you can do
First and foremost, please be patient. Everyone should know by now that shipping anything is taking longer. Even the coveted Amazon 1 and 2 days shipments are often late these days, and some Amazon shipments do seem to get lost with some regularity.
Second, ask us for help. If your package seems to be permanently stuck and not making progress getting to you, give us a shout. We have been known to drop a second shipment to try and resolve situations like that. You may now know this, but if you receive a package, mark REFUSED on it, and put it back in the mail, it will go back to the sender. That is what we will ask you to do to one package, if both packages we send you for a single order arrive, eventually.
Third, order in October for the holidays. Seriously. My kids are working on their Christmas wish lists right now, and we hope to be done in the next couple of weeks, after which we will start ordering presents. Also get your orders for things like Harry and David or Swiss Colony (my favorite) in early and set the ship date for early December.
With a little planning, you can get ahead of the expected difficult holiday season and skip all the mess.
