Buying a Restored Pan

R

RobHerrington

Member
There is a giant flea market in Texas in a couple of weeks where I know I can find plenty of cast iron skillets and D ovens.

The thing is, the best pans I have seen are sold by this guy who appears to have already de-rusted and de-crudded all the pans. And who can blame him? They do look great and you always want your inventory to look its best.

But I confess to this perverse preference that he not clean up his pans, because he is thereby cheating me out of using all the information I've learned here. There's nothing sadder than a lye tank with no pans in it.

Maybe I can get him to crud and rust them up for me. :redface:
 
Rob,
The upside to buying restored pans is that you never have an unpleasant surprise when you pull them out of the lye or e-tank and see a previously undiscovered crack or pinhole. Yes, you pay more for the pan but I have a tall stack of reasons NOT to buy crusty pans.

Is that large flea market in Canton?

Jack
 
Hello, Jack, yes, it's the one in Canton. The next one is on the 31st but it runs three days, I think. It's monstrous big. I went once before and found out later that I didn't even see half of it! It's very interesting, both from a merchandise and a cultural standpoint. It is different from Madison, WI, and Portland, OR. A lot. (Use your imagination!)

There are also lots of little shops in and around Canton that are not part of the flea market that I will be checking out. The traders are serious, and so they know exactly what a large logo Griswold, etc. is, so I don't expect to find any screaming bargains. Which is fine, as I'll be burning a half tank of gas to get there and back anyway!
 
Hello again, Jack, after I posted that answer above, I realized I was probably preaching to the choir and that you had already been to Canton at least once and knew more about it than I did!

The main guy that I saw had the same iron (size and types) that you are showing in your thread from last year,, but he must have gussied it up with some cooking oil, as it was all very shiny and nice looking, at a casual glance at least. Nothing rusty anywhere.

On the prices, I have mixed feelings about that. On the one hand I like a bargain as much as the next guy, but if I had gone to the trouble of cleaning up and setting up a booth like the one I saw, I know I'd price my stuff pretty high as well. It's also the case that you have a lot of wealthy people in north Texas that like to hunt antiques on the weekends; it doesn't matter to them in the slightest that they may be paying double eBay prices, and the vendors know this, so maybe they're right not to bargain. Or they "bargain" down from $200 to $180 on a pan that goes for $75 on eBay. I'll try to get some insight into their pricing methods next time I'm there and after I actually buy something.
 
Rob,
I agree with you 100%. That's why I haven't been back. Well, that and I really enjoy the hunt for a bargain.

Jack
 
I have been collecting cast iron cookware for a little over 10 years but the past 8 years I have also setup and sold iron the first 2 weekends of October during a scenic drive held in central Illinois near where I live. Every year I put out a spread of 120+ cleaned and seasoned pieces. Most of my customers don't collect but are just looking for pieces to use and don't care if it has a name on it or not so I sell a lot of BSR, 1 and 3 notch Lodge and unmarked Wagners skillets. Since they don't collect and are not familiar with the cleaning processes everything has to be cleaned and ready to go. When people walk thru looking and comment on how clean or nice looking everything is I usually reply "they sell better that way" or "they didn't look like that when I bought them".
These two weekends are the only time I set up to sell because it takes all year to buy/clean/season this many pieces and I usually sell about 90% of my stuff each year. When I first started and up til a few years ago I could buy dirty iron at auctions in this area really cheap and that allowed me to price my clean stuff very reasonable to move it. Shortly thereafter all the cooking shows on TV started talking up the use of cast iron skillets and then cast iron Facebook sites started popping up. While this initially helped my business it is slowly making it difficult for me to buy and resell locally since some new users/collectors at auctions are now paying the same prices for dirty "as found" unmarked skillets that I charge for my cleaned and seasoned ones. Since this scenic drive covers over 100 miles around the county the vendors are set up in many different areas so my prices have to reasonable to get peope to buy why they are there and not leave thinking they can fnd a better deal somewhere else. I can't really pay higher than usual prices for them then raise my prices and hope they sell after sitting on them all year.
Ok, I'm done ranting. :-|

On the bright side those cheap buying prices when I first started collecting allowed me to put together a pretty good 225+ piece collection that was pretty much paid for after only a couple years of selling. :grin:

Here's some pics from my sales in 2011,12 and 13. The past few years I either get busy right after I set up or it starts raining and have to cover everything up and then forget to take pics.
2013 https://m.imgur.com/a/a7cXg
2012 https://m.imgur.com/a/HZj1Q
2011 https://m.imgur.com/a/1noUC
 
Jeff...Great post and great display of the CI. Sure makes it easy to find what one has in mind when they visit your space. Hope your efforts pay off. It's a lot of work to clean and season that much CI so I can see that it takes up most of the year to accumulate that much and get it ready to sell.
 
Talk about work product! That is a great display Jeff. I hope you do well at the selling, as the amount of effort represented is awesome! (I'm including your set up in my comment; I've done enough flea markets to know how much work that represents too!)
 
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